By Richard E. Field
European Union membership has been a mixed blessing for Hungary. While certain sectors of the Hungarian economy have thrived, Hungarian agriculture is dying a slow, painful death. Hungarian farmers find themselves no better able to complete with their Western counterparts now than when the tariffs were first lifted seven years ago.
Small farmers who traditionally grew produce and raised livestock for local consumption have been particularly hard hit. For example, it is significantly cheaper for a Hungarian supermarket chain to purchase onions from Holland than from the southern Hungarian town of Makó, once considered to be the onion growing capital of Hungary. Hungarian supermarket chains offer whole chickens for sale for less than what it costs to raise a chicken in Hungary. For nearly a decade Hungary’s world famous Pick salami has been made from pigs imported from Romania, Slovakia, and Poland.
When I first arrived to Hungary twenty years ago, nearly everybody kept a small vegetable garden or orchard, often in their back yard. Most families living in small towns and villages kept chickens and pigs, ususally in their back yards. What they didn’t consume they either bartered for other foodstuffs or sold at the local market. Even today my wife’s cousin, an EU agricultural policy specialist by day, spends his summer evenings and weekends growing and selling potatoes. The pig he slaughters once a year yields an impressive quantity of sausages and meat. In addition to providing his family with a regular source of fresh food, raising potatoes, chickens and pigs gives him a sense of pride. It is an important part of who he is.
Until recently, the same could be said of millions of Hungarians living in the countryside. But something has gone terribly awry.
Small scale Hungarian agriculture has collapsed with devastating effect on the Hungarian countryside. Formerly prosperous agricultural regions have been laid waste. Not only have small holders ceased producing for local consumers–they’ve stopped producing for themselves as well, preferring instead to work in factories, on construction sites, or simply collect welfare. Now that the factories have closed, the construction industry collapsed, and welfare benefits slashed, many small holders and former agricultural workers are threatened with starvation. And if anybody doubts that this is the case, I encourage them to tour the region between Jaszberény and Szolnók. Gorgeous fin-de-siècle buildings and large single family homes built during the last twenty years of communism attest to the former prosperity of this region.
Today the Jász region is a wasteland. You can drive from Jászberenyi to Ujszáz via Jaszapáti and Jászkisér and back via Jászalsószentgyörgy, Alattyán and Jásztelek–a distance of 120 km–and not see a single chicken or milk cow by the side of the road. You won’t see them in people’s back yards either. They were either eaten, stolen, or sold off a long time ago.
Poverty has reached such levels that many families must resort to burning fence ties and even their own roof timbers because they can’t afford firewood. In Jászalsószentgyörgy children spend their time out of school on the banks of swamps desperately trying to catch a fish or two to take home. In the case of one family I visited, the only food in the house was half a head of cabbage.
The reasons for the collapse of small scale agriculture and animal husbandry in the Hungarian countryside are complex. The agricultural cooperatives set up under Communism that employed hundreds of thousands (including many Roma) were wound up in the early 1990s. Many former agricultural workers managed to find work in manufacturing and construction, often commuting
daily by bus to factories and construction sites in neighboring counties.
Because of the commuting distances involved, many chose to work double shifts–rising early in the morning and returning late at night—leaving them with neither the time nor the energy to grow crops, tend orchards, raise animals, or keep gardens.
The last two decades witnessed the gradual adoption of Western lifestyles and the emergence of nuclear families. Without at least one live-in grandparent to water the garden and feed the animals when the parents and children were away, it was no longer practical to grow crops or keep animals. In economic terms, in the two decades following the collapse of Communism hundreds of thousands of Hungarians went from producing much of what they consumed and selling surpluses at local markets to being industrial wage earners. Previously they were relatively insulated from the vagaries of the marketplace–what they couldn’t sell they could always eat. Now they can only eat what they can afford to buy.
Part of the problem is that there has been a fundamental breakdown in the system by which small holders can store and sell their produce and livestock. In the years following EU accession scores of non-EU compliant milk collection facilities were forced to close down, depriving small holders of the means by which to store and sell their milk. In a country where virtually anybody can set up a limited liability company, bankrupt companies take years to liquidate, and there are no punitive damages, rapacious middlemen bought up entire harvests and flocks without bothering to pay for them, instilling fear and distrust among producers.
In 2004 one company, Hajdú-Bét Rt., single-handedly destroyed the Hungarian geese farming industry by lending its majority shareholder the money it owed 550 geese farmers just before it declared bankruptcy. Facing financial ruin, nine geese farmers committed suicide. (Five years later the former CEO of the majority shareholder was made Prime Minister of Hungary. Go figure!)
Recently, there has been some talk about establishing a network of cooperatives much like those set up in late 1890s to purchase from small holders and sell to grocery stores and supermarkets. This system of distribution worked well through the end of the Second World War by which time there were some 700,000 members. But if most of Hungary’s small holders have stopped producing, what exactly are the new cooperatives to purchase and from whom?
Clearly, in order for Hungary to get back on its feet, it is not enough to “create one million jobs over the next ten years”–one of the avowed goals of the current government. Some degree of self-sufficiency must be restored to the Hungarian countryside. People living in the countryside and towns must be persuaded to support themselves, at least in part, by growing crops and raising animals.
In 2010 the central Hungarian town of Jászkisér provided 80 individuals each with 1,000 Ft ($5) worth of vegetable seed on the condition they agree to plant a 40 sqm [400 square feet] garden at home (see project descriptions attached). The local government organized a competition to see which of the 33 participating families grew the nicest gardens. Participants received nothing in the way of fertilizer, pesticide, or tools. Their only incentive was the prospect of growing fresh vegetables for themselves and their families and winning the respect of their community.
The results were extraordinary. Unfortunately, heavy rain and high ground water destroyed some 30 gardens. (Poor people tend to live in lower lying areas). But 50 gardens were successful. So successful, in fact, that a number of participants were able to either barter surplus vegetables for other foodstuffs or take them to market.
All program participants were Roma. Apparently Roma households and communities living in agricultural areas still possess the knowledge, skills and tools necessary to plant and cultivate gardens. All they need is the seed. And to the extent they have forgotten how to grow vegetables, as Ferenc Nemes, agricultural specialist with the Foreign Agricultural Service of the United States Department of Agriculture, points out, there is no shortage of garden clubs or retired agronomists living in the countryside prepared to advise and assist them.
I have asked Ferenc Nemes to figure out a way to replicate this experiment in 50 towns and villages this year. Our goal should be to distribute $5 worth of seed each to 8,000 individuals. The Hungarian planting season starts the second half of March and lasts through the end of May, so that gives us a month to organize it. If 8,000 gardens can be planted in this manner and only 5/8ths of the gardens succeed as in the case of Jászkisér, the program should yield 5,000 vegetable gardens.
Assuming administrative costs do not exceed the value of the seed to be distributed, the cost per participant should be around $10. If a 40 sqm garden produces just $300 worth of fresh vegetables over the course of a summer, an investment of $80,000 should yield at least $1,500,000 worth of vegetables. That’s a return of nearly 20 to one.
Perhaps successful participants should be required to turn over $10 worth of produce for sale or distribution to local schools. This money, in turn, can be used to finance the next year’s seed and administrative costs. The following year we might expand this to 10,000 or 20,000 individuals through some chickens into the mix.
Mr. Nemes points out that once 5,000 individuals in a given region are growing vegetables on a regular basis we can persuade local grocery stores and restaurants to buy their produce. We might even persuade the large supermarket chains to set aside part of their shelf and freezer space for fruits, vegetables, and poultry produced in this way.
The planting season begins in six weeks. I look forward to receiving Mr. Nemes’ recommendations later this week and to working out the details with the Hungarian Red Cross and local experts the following week so that we can roll the program out at the beginning of March crops and raising animals.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Field, a graduate of McCaskey High School and a real estate developer, founded and heads the American House Foundation.
Isn’t it fantastic that an American with noHungarian background should draw our attention to the terrible conditions prevailing in some parts of Hungary, and that he should even have helped to develop a project to improve matters?
Richard, who is a supporter of the liberal MLP parliamentary party seems to represent a new version of the Falukutatok (village explorers) of interwar fame. It is indeed hard to believe that life should be as hard for many villagers in Hungary as it was in the 1930s, and this after the famed rural prosperity of the Communist Kadar years.