Latifundia in Hungary?

Biró, Szabolcs

Keywords: large farms, acquisition of land, land market, land sales

In Hungary, business entities with land over 50 hectares use 650 hectares of agricultural land on the average. This is nearly six times the average area of one-person farms with land over 50 hectares (114 ha). In the 650 farms, the difference is twenty-fold – these farms cultivate a total of 1.4 million hectares, each having 2,100 hectares of land on average. According to the list of direct area payments, the 70 largest farms in Hungary currently cultivate a total of 350 hectares – 20% more than what once belonged to the Eszterházy family. Most of them have 3,000-5,000 hectares (corresponding to the land of the magnates), twenty large farms cultivate 5,000-10,000 hectares (the lower limit of the lands of old aristocrats). There are also three ‘super farms’ with 10,000-15,000 hectares – on a global scale, this size is equivalent to a portion of a latifundium only.
Developing countries and countries with a transitional market economy have gradually become the target of foreign investors due to their obsolete agricultural system and chronic lack of capital. These countries assist the entry of multinational companies or have been forced to open up their market of production assets. Global capital enters agriculture primarily through vertical integration and production contracts. The presence of multinational companies hiders the survival of traditional forms of sustenance farming. The market leverage changes arising from industry concentration damages both producers and consumers, and in many cases also leads to over-exhaustion of the environment and the natural resources.

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