Increasing the competitiveness of production in Hungarian agriculture through an innovation system

Erdeiné Késmárki-Gally, Szilvia – Fenyvesi, László – Mondovics, János

Keywords: inputs, market-focused model, self-teaching system

The final versions of the European Union’s (EU) support schemes and funding in-struments for the 2014-2020 budgeting period have not yet been prepared. What is fi-nal, though, is that the ten-year Lisbon Strategy which aimed at strengthening the competitiveness of the EU ended in 2010. In addition to three priorities (smart, sus-tainable and inclusive growth), the recently launched Europe 2020 Strategy has set five headline targets to be reached, one of them being an increased investment in research and development. This is evidently a difficult challenge owing to the limited economic capacity of individual EU Member States.
The system we have defined as market-focused technology development focuses on the marketing activities of the agricultural industry and on increasing the competitive-ness of agricultural products. The objectives of the system are as follows: inducing competition between input suppliers, increasing supply, loosening rigid trading struc-tures, fostering the optimisation of mechanisation and ensuring the possibility of ap-propriate technology development. The experiences of recent years show that the de-veloped system can function effectively in Hungarian circumstances.
The world market operates under strict regulations (e.g. regarding processing, prod-uct quality etc.) but our system addresses that issue by incorporating the following three elements: measurement of inputs in space and time, market-focused technology development and a self-teaching information system for farmers and that could be used in rural development, primarily in the area of agricultural production. Hungary can make better use of its unique agricultural potential by providing a competitive edge for its agricultural production and food industry which in turn would have a favourable effect on the domestic input production. By using this system, the economic growth, ef-ficiency and competitiveness of the whole country may be fostered, the operation of the system can be permanently monitored and its results can be easily measured. The pro-duction management system that generates the information is also able to connect to other types of integrated management structures (e.g. logistics and sales organisa-tions). While developing the system, we relied on experience gained from the operation of previous agricultural production systems and also considered the specific local con-ditions with the aim of offering a potential solution to meeting the objectives of the Europe 2020 Strategy.

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