Irrigation, planting orchards and mushroom cultivation – the renewal of gardening

The fruit and vegetable sector can keep repeating last year’s excellent performance if the government’s latest plans are realised. Instead of the current HUF 600-billion product value HUF 900-1,000 billion would be produced, multiplying the present HUF 70-billion export as well. When the present issue of our magazine went to press the Hungarian Fruit and Vegetable Sector Strategy wasn’t finalised yet, but we know that the programme features necessary steps such as irrigation development, the creation of an IT and statistics background and a tax system that supports the establishment of Producers’ Sales Organisations (TÉSZ). At the same time the draft strategy also mentions the problems, from the lack of expertise to the problems in quality control. The action plan also lists the required steps to make the sector capable of producing an annual 3.5 million tons of quality fruit and vegetable by 2020. More than half of Hungary’s fruit and vegetable production goes to export. There is demand for more than we can currently supply, so it is of our utmost interest to modernise our production structure.

Agricultural Research Institute (AKI) examined the production efficiency of small farms employing part-time work and found that the number of work hours varied from 500 to 800 hours per hectare. In the gardening sector 49 million manual working days are needed a year to grow the fruits/vegetables, store them and turn them into actual products. This means that the gardening sector offers work for 340,000 people if we calculate with a 6-month season and 22 working days per month. If we take a look at the main objectives worded in the government strategy, we can see that the most important is to install an irrigation system on 80 percent of the land used for vegetable production. This step would result in the production of 400,000 tons more vegetable (investment cost: HUF 60 billion, from which HUF 30 billion would be state-funded). Mushroom production would grow from the current 25,000 tons to 50,000 tons by investing HUF 36 billion (HUF 18 billion would be state subsidy) in 100 heat treatment units, 60 mushroom farms and tinned mushroom production capacity improvement (by 15,000 tons). The 35,000 hectares of old and obsolete fruit trees need to be cut down and on 45,000 hectares of old and 24,500 hectares of new world-class orchards we would harvest 1.2 million tons of excellent-quality fruit a year. Production value would rise by HUF 50 billion per year. The state would provide HUF 60 billion from the total investment of HUF 160 billion.