Hungarian pork sector: going in the right direction

As part of the pork consumption promotional campaign planned by the Ministry of Agriculture and implemented by the Agricultural Marketing Centre (AMC), a conference was organised to discuss the way forward for the sector. The first speaker was AMC managing director László Daróczi, who spoke about how the campaign started at this year’s SIRHA Budapest and continued on various platforms. Secretary of state György Czerván stressed that the output of Hungarian agriculture had been growing since 2010 and reached a record level in 2017. In 2017 the value of agri-food export was EUR 8.9 billion.

György Kiss, president of the Hungarian Purebred Pig Breeders’ Association (FSE) told: the objective of Hungarian pig breeders is to produce meat that is tasty, healthy and isn’t expensive. Tibor Nagy, Bonafarm Zrt.’s director of agriculture talked about increasing their slaughter pig production from 500,000 to 900,000. Balázs Prohászka, chief financial officer of Kométa ‘99 Zrt. introduced how profitability can be granted in the processing phase.

Rita Csillag-Vella, client service director of GfK revealed that Hungarian households spent HUF 901 billion on fresh products in 2017, and one third of this sum was used to buy fresh meat products. About 4 million Hungarian families purchase 2kg of fresh meat on average, twice a week. A roundtable discussion on competitiveness closed the conference, with the participation of the speakers, plus Tamás Tarpataki, head of department at the Ministry of Agriculture and Zoltán Babati, president of the Livestock and Meat Interprofessional Organisation and Marketing Board (VHT) and owner-managing director of Babati és Társa Kft. //