Final debate: efficiency and employment in Hungarian agriculture

Mészáros, Sándor — Szabó, Gábor

Keywords: total factor productivity, efficiency-oriented and employment-oriented agricultural policy

We launched a debate article in the 2014/1 issue of Gazdálkodás entitled “Efficiency and employment in Hungarian agriculture”. We defined the purpose of the debate as follows: “The discussion and debate should focus on the opportunities and means of improvement of employment and effectiveness” (ibid p. 59). For our part, we distinguished between two national-level agricultural development strategies: efficiency-oriented and employment- oriented development. We tried to limit the scope of the debate to only the situation in Hungary, only agriculture, while merely touching on environmental issues.
It is fair to say that our keynote article raised keen interest, as the eight reply articles were published in the journal in the following 12 months, penned by 17 different authors. In this closing article we wish to evaluate the comments, agree or disagree with the authors, and formulate recommendations for agricultural decision makers and ideas for further research. One of the findings was that while the debate has come to an end in the Gazdálkodás journal, it should continue on in other forums, for the benefit and education of experts and the further development and improvement of Hungarian agriculture.
We have collected the following proposals, mainly based on the papers we received, which are particularly important and timely for the future development of Hungarian agriculture.
The intensified development of the production structure of Hungarian agriculture has long been an important goal, but has become more so at present given the increasingly fierce international competition. One of the most obvious methods of increasing employment in agricultural is through intensification.
Following the example of Poland, the development of a comprehensive and dynamic food industry is a crucial and important task.
Training highly qualified farm workers and improving the quality of the advice they receive is necessary for effectiveness and employment within the sector.
Improving and developing the knowledge of professionals at the top is also needed; this includes the faculty doctoral schools and research institutions. This is why new, up-to-date research methods should be available to and used by a wider public, such as those used in the paper of Imre Fertő and Lajos Baráth on the economic effectiveness and competitiveness in foreign trade (Fertő - Baráth, 2014, p. 279-290).
Promotion of associations between small and medium businesses should be one of the important goals of agricultural policy.
The management of regional employment problems requires attention.
We believe that in the future the protection of the environment needs to be increasingly taken into consideration and enforced within agriculture. Such issues may include adaptation to climate change (global warming), which entails afforestation, establishment of shelter-belts, irrigation systems and targeted deployment of reservoirs etc. Such projects cannot come about without government (public) involvement and investment.

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