Ten years of the Hungarian Association of Agricultural Informatics in the service of agricultural enterprises I.

Herdon, Miklós

Keywords: agricultural enterprises, agricultural informatics, applications, services

The last decade brought about significant development in the hardware and software of information technology and in applications and services based on them. This has provided agricultural enterprises new opportunities and in many areas the new tools have already become indispensible. This change in Hungary has been felt most markedly with the introduction and development of the so call European Union Agricultural Information systems covering the country’s entire agricultural sector. In recent years Hungary’s international professional relationships have been expanded following the formation of the Association of Hungarian Agricultural Informatics (Magyar Agrárinformatikai Szövetség, MAGISZ) in 1998. In 1999 the Association has become a member of the European professional body (EFITA or European Federation for Information Technology in Agriculture, Food and Environment) and in 2003 staged an exceptionally successful international conference with the participation of 31 countries. The work of MAGISZ in the last 10 years centred around the organisation of conferences, forums, workshops relevant to agricultural informatics, support for port-graduate education in agricultural informatics including supervision of diploma theses and holding summer university courses in agricultural informatics, which took place in the last three years with international participation sponsored by fellow associations and institutions from home and abroad.
Apart from the above activities MAGISZ has founded the “Agricultural Informatics Commemorative Medal” price, which in 2005 and 2007 was awarded to professionals who have made significant contributions in the field of Agricultural Informatics. From the point of view of building international relationships, the participation of the Association in preparations of the long term European strategy plan (AMI@Netfood) with 14 consortium members from 14 countries within the international FP5 project was an important event.