Thoughts on

Udovecz, Gábor

Keywords: efficiency, competitiveness, agribusiness, employment

Increasing efficiency in agriculture may reduce the employment opportunities. However, the rational solution of this contradiction is limited. Cross-border, increasingly intense global competition dominates the world, from which Hungarian agriculture can only partly withdraw itself. This effort could be supported by producing unique (inimitable) products, by stimulating the local economy, or by product labelling! Such “hungaricums” may reach a retail market share of 20% within decades. However, the remaining 80% will continue to compete. Hence, efficiency needs to be further improved but, more importantly, it is essential to enhance processing and improve the organisation in sales and cooperation, thus create competitiveness in the whole sector, in the whole agribusiness. In this desired case, the number of agricultural workers would increase only slightly, but the supporting capacity of the whole sector could be significantly improved! In the current processes, not the size of a farm and the employment is confronted, but the structure of production and the employment opportunities. The problem is not that the increase in efficiency reduces the demand for labour in agriculture, but this consequence has not been compensated by conscious improvement of the whole agribusiness! Therefore, if Hungarian agriculture had some decades in stable and predictable conditions to adjust, not only its efficiency indicators, but also its position in the international competition would improve. It would reach growth and expansion of employment!

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