Experiences related to the creation and operation of Hungary’s first electronic agrotrade marketplace

Badinszky, Péter – Varga, Péter

Keywords: agricultural economy, e-business, marketplace, portal, e-commerce

This paper introduces the experiences relating to the first Hungarian agricultural portal project – called Agriportal, www.agriportal.hu - the first mission of which was to create the first Hungarian electronic marketplace for agrotrade. We examine all the circumstances, results and all the relevant economic environmental issues that affected the creation and the operation of this e-commerce portal. One of the authors of this paper was the project leader, so we have first hand information regarding the transactions and experiences. We seek to draw the attention of agricultural experts to all the issues and results that have arisen around this electronic marketplace project. Through the interconnections of e-commerce all the conflicts existing in the agricultural supply chain emerge, alongside other related problems occurring at the macro and microeconomic level. Results prove that portal technology development alone cannot substitute for a lack of business culture and knowledge. We can discern that a sustainable socio-economic transformation can survive only in a positive economic atmosphere, which needs a fundamental change in attitudes towards new mechanisms.

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