Some factors responsible for reductions in employment on farms in Hungary

A decline in the number of people working on farms and in the Annual Work Units per unit area was typical of the second half of the first decade of the 21st century in the member states of the European Union. Hungary is one of the countries where this reduction is twice as high as the average. This can be attributed to a number of factors. Of these, the present paper is concerned on the one hand with farm concentration, the low level of farm diversification and pluriactivity and the desire of farmers to expand their farms, and on the other hand with various aspects of the support policy in Hungary aimed at the economic competitiveness and the diversification of the rural economy. The database on which the work was based was taken partly from the digital and printed publications of EUROSTAT and the Hungarian Central Statistical Office (KSH) and partly from surveys of 104 farmers in three microregions of Hungary. Even before the global economic crisis, the factors in question tended to result in a decline in farm employment in Hungary, especially on individual farms. The means and measures embodied in the agricultural and rural policies proved too few and too weak to counterbalance this trend