OTKA Registration number: T.019027 (1996-1999)

Alajos Fehér, Ph.D.

Sustainable agriculture was interpreted as a farming system and the special problems hindering the introduction of this system in underdeveloped, less favoured agricultural areas were investigated. These were found to be the following:

1. Neglect of soil protection and soil fertility maintenance. When the land nationalised by the previous regime was re-allocated, no attention was paid to the soil protection, amelioration and irrigation systems constructed during the last few decades, and this omission led to an increase in erosion and logging waters. The nutrient-supplying capacity of the soil deteriorated greatly due to the irrational plant nutrition and inefficient soil cultivation. These problems were more pronounced in underdeveloped, less favoured agricultural regions.

2. In the Northern Hungary macroregion there was a sudden increase in the proportion of neglected, uncultivated areas in the early nineties. While the ratio of such land was around 1 % in 1990, it had risen to 15 % in 1993, representing over 80,000 hectares. There was a drop in this ratio between 1994 and 1998, but, since the necessary measures were not taken, the area of unused land rose to around 100,000 hectares again by the year 2000. This was due in great part to a shift in the minimum profitability of agriculture and to an increase in the proportion of permanently waterlogged land. Surveys have shown that 75 % of the land which has been unused for a long period is found in districts with less favoured agricultural areas, where regional tensions and accumulated disadvantages are the most pronounced.

3. The drastic reduction in the livestock was still continuing at the turn of the century. This resulted in a great distortion of the ratio of crop production and animal husbandry at both farm and regional level. Between 1985 and 1996 the stocking rate in the Northern Hungary macroregion declined by 58 %. The greatest reduction was observed in the Bodrogköz Region, the Borsod Flood-plain, the Borsod Hills, the Borsod Plains, the Cserehát Region, the Hatvan Plains, the Hegyköz Hills, the Heves Hills, the Egri-Bükkalja Region, the Northern Cserhát Region, the Medves Region and the Nógrád Basin. With the exception of the Borsod Plains and the Hatvan Plains these microregions are all areas with poor potential. It is a strange contradiction that in the majority of the microregions the proportion of grasslands is larger than the average for the macroregion, and these are now lying waste as permanent fallow, like much of the arable land.

4. The crop production structure has become narrower. While in 1985, for example, only 1.5 % of farms planted less than 3 types of crops, by 1995 this was characteristic of 24.4 % of farms. Between 1985 and 1996 more than 91 % of the sowing area was occupied by large-scale crops (cereals, sunflower, alfalfa) and very little land remained for alternative crops. In 1996, for example, compared with the national average, wheat was grown on a lower proportion of the sowing area in regions with good or excellent wheat-growing potential (with the exception of the Borsod Plains and the Hernád Valley) and on a higher proportion in regions with poorer wheat-growing potential. Similar irrationality was encountered in the Borsod HiIls, the Egri-Bükkalja Region and the Northern Cserhát Region, where the stocking rate was low on high-lying, unexploited grasslands, while a high proportion of land was sown to roughage crops.

5. Substantial regional differences developed in the proportion of entrepreneurs and people with secondary and higher qualifications. Investigations have demonstrated that the density of small enterprises and the proportion of people with secondary and higher qualifications is lower in crisis regions with poor potential and regional tensions, and the ratio of the population whose age, qualifications, mentality, etc. make them incapable of active adaptation is increasing.

A new approach was employed to analyse the role of various structural elements within the agricultural structure in the development of sustainable agriculture in regions with less favoured areas. (The structural elements investigated were the structure of land use and sub-sectors of agriculture, cooperational and coordinational structures, the structure of human resources, and the structure of farms and agricultural holdings .) For almost all these structural elements increasing regional differences and tensions were found to be present in the Northern Hungary macroregion. In less favoured areas with multiple disadvantages these differences and tensions are so great that they will inhibit the development of a farming system suitable for sustainable agriculture in both the short and the long term. On the basis of farm experience and market research, a proposal was elaborated for the diversification of the crop production structure in the microregions.