Hungarian agriculture has been struck by a series of natural catastrophes last year: floods and inland water destroyed fall crops and caused delays to a degree never experienced before. The total of winter and spring damages exceeded 9.5 billion HUF and within that the damage done to agricultural areas was more than 8 billion HUF. During the summer floods, inland water, wind and hail storms left 10.3 billion HUF worth of damage behind. Altogether 437 thousand hectares, out of that 280 thousand hectares of arable land were flooded. Because of that 1999 can boast no outstanding agricultural achievements. According to preliminary figures the production of agricultural goods dropped 3-4 percent. Within that plant growing fell back 5-6 percent while stock-farming basically stagnated at the 1998 level.
One of the serious problems that the industry had to face was that procurement prices almost did not change at all throughout the year (even fell in the case of animals), while the prices of goods necessary for production went up nearly 10 percent, applying additional pressure to the price-cost squeeze. The profitability of products did not improve: producers, processing plants and merchants did not have an equal share of the “profits” brought about by low food prices.
The Ministry of Agriculture intensified its diplomatic efforts, opening doors onto markets that had never before seen Hungarian food products. In spite of that, as a result of falling world market prices, agricultural and food exports fell back 16.8 percent to 2.3 billion USD. The value of agraricultural imports was 1 billion USD (equal to 17.7 percent drop); and the 1.3 billion surplus is 18.0 percent less than the previous year.
Prospects for 2000 are more promising. Under the current circumstances, however, even reaching the agricultural production level of 1999 would be a good result. –
