Full-time, independent farmers and the success function

Kovács, Teréz

Keywords: full-time independent farmers, working habits, success, new capitalism

The aim of the research was to determine farmers’ working habits and which of these they could successfully adapt to the market economy.
It is characteristic of full-time independent farmers that they enjoy working – a trait inherited from their parents. All have strong personalities, which is why they have built up their own, autonomous farms, thereby also establishing their own autonomous personality. Independent farmers in the agricultural sector took their ready-made templates for the development of their farms firstly from the household, secondly from family farms prior to total collectivisation, and only thirdly from earlier working relationships and experiences.
The following types of working habit were outlined by the study: rustic, post-rustic, rustic-bourgeois, productionist managerial, technocratic managerial, and entrepreneurial. Farmers’ habits are characteristically not homogenous; rather a number of habitual elements are combined as a function of earlier life-experience and conditions. This development is partly due to the fact that after the democratic transition a vacuum developed in this field and traditional habits trickled back unobtrusively into this vacuum. On the other hand, new entrepreneurial habits are difficult to develop, because their development requires at least the following three conditions: (1) the farmer must possess certain personal attitudes, primarily an unshakable faith in their own success; (2) family unity and solidarity; and (3) there need to be farmers with coinciding strategies, either locally or in the surrounding settlements.
In the new capitalism, farmers’ success depends not only on hard economic facts, in other words on capital investment, but also on softer, social factors such as economic attitudes. Furthermore, the family represents one of the most important resources in their success.

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