Profitability and regional differences of irrigated sweet corn (Zea mays conv. saccharata) in Hungary

The cultivated agricultural area of Hungary is 5.3 million ha, which accounts for 57.5% of total area of the country, and provides outstanding opportunities for agriculture.
In the last couple of decades, we’ve been experiencing increasing impact of drought, yet the area currently equipped with outdoor irrigation systems reaches only 144 thousand ha, however, no more than 100 thousand ha are actually irrigated by producers.
The increase of irrigable areas would be a huge development opportunity for Hungarian open field plant production.
This is even more important in light of the expected negative impacts of climate change in the region.
The Hungarian Chamber of Agriculture carried out a survey in the areas with the most potential for irrigation development.
This included 1.2 million ha and 43,026 producers.
Of this area, producers intend to irrigate 388.5 thousand ha in the future, which means a new irrigation demand of 268.5 thousand ha.
Concerning vegetables, producers mainly want to irrigate sweet corn (33.6 thousand ha). Of this, 9.8 thousand ha already had some kind of an irrigation system, meaning 23.8 thousand ha of new irrigation demand.
Based on the producers’ responses, we’ve estimated what economic benefits can be realized with irrigation.
We’ve made a detailed calculation of the profitability indices of sweet corn.
Production value of non-irrigated sweet corn was between 1.2 and 1.9 thousand EUR ha^-1, while irrigation increased this to 1.5-2.78 thousand EUR ha^-1.

IX International Symposium on Irrigation of Horticultural Crops

I. Ehret-Berczi, A. Kiss, E. Vári, F. Apáti, Sz. Németh

Zea mays var. saccharata, vegetable, income, cost

https://doi.org/10.17660/ActaHortic.2022.1335.1