Endre Harsányi

THE IMPACT OF VARIOUS LAND USE TYPES ON THE LIVING CONDITIONS OF PEOPLE EMPLOYED IN AGRICULTURE

Grain crops, industrial and fodder crops occupy determinant proportion of the sown area (in 2004 this figure was 88,4%). Cultivation typically produces mass products, with an almost entirely mechanised production structure. This fact was neither changed by the significant transformation of ownership and farming forms, and the headway of individual farming using smaller land sizes. It has a disadvantageous consequence that the adjusting of production to the site conditions of production and to the dimension of farming was not started in a perceptable degree. The production of mechanisable products regarded as big farm products — cereals, maize, rape, sunflower — are preferred both by farming organisations, and individual producers. The former production structure has been conserved owing to the shortage of capital, the lack of expertise of different fields, and the absence of market orientation. It is a certain furtherance that the role of individual farms is gradually becoming stronger in the production of the so-called “small products”. In the examined period the general decrease and occasionally the salient fluctuation of average yields can be observed (in recent years it increased). The annual fluctuation of yield levels and their change during the examined period was influenced not only by regional differences and the effect of weather, but also the shortcomings in agricultural technical equipment.

The situation of agriculture in economy of national food production

The significant role of Hungarian agriculture in national economy is primarily due to the favourable climate, good natural conditions and production traditions. The Land Use and Regional Development Research Team of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences at Debrecen University places special emphasis on examining agriculture and national economy, especially in the North Great Plain region so that problems related to this region are revealed.