THE FUTURE OF HORTICULTURE IN SOME SOCIALIST COUNTRIES — A CASE STUDY OF HUNGARY

The future of horticultural production – first of all that of edible produces – is of outstanding interest in European socialist countries from the viewpoint of food supply.

Since import capability of these countries is generally restricted, they must rely first of all on their own production.
After the collectivization of agriculture of these countries agricultural labour has rapidly decreased.
As a result of it, state and cooperative farms have gradually diminished labour intensive, among others horticultural production.
This was the case in Hungary too.
Various factors, among them the central incentive and taxing system, were supporting this tendency.

In socialist agriculture – where this was allowed – a great part of labour intensive produces has been produced on household farms since the collectivization.
In Hungarian agriculture household farming and other private and semi-private forms of farming have been promoted and integrated by state and cooperative farms for some years.
A sort of division of labour is developing, where large farms produce the less and small farms the more labour consuming products.
If this tendency is to prove long lasting, a sort of reprivatization of agriculture may solve the problem of horticultural and other labour consuming production.

X International Symposium on Horticultural Economics

A. BURGER

https://doi.org/10.17660/ActaHortic.1988.223.9