Domestic vegetable production has achieved significant efficiency gains over the last decade and a half, which is most clearly reflected in yields, said Agriculture Minister István Nagy.
Between 2010 and 2023, yields per hectare in Hungary more than doubled for tomatoes and increased by four-fifths for peppers. In addition, farmers harvested more carrots, tomatoes, onions, green peas and sweet corn, the Agriculture Ministry said in a statement.
István Nagy stressed that although the weather has a serious impact on the performance of the horticultural sector, the market environment, the volatility of consumer demand or input prices, Hungarian vegetable production has improved both qualitatively and quantitatively in recent years thanks to government measures supporting production security and farmers’ liquidity.
Although the area under cultivation for some crops has decreased, the increase in production intensity and the strengthening of professional producers have also been accompanied by increases in yields in recent years.
A good example of this trend is tomatoes, whose volume increased by almost a third to over 177,000 tonnes between 2010 and 2023. Onion production also increased significantly, by 42.4 percent to over 58,000 tonnes. This trend was also reinforced by an increase in carrot yields by almost 23.6 percent, green peas by 49.6 percent and sweet corn by almost 68.6 percent, the minister said.
István Nagy pointed out
The horticultural sector has received significant funding through the Rural Development Programme in recent years.
Thus, almost seven thousand investments worth 185 billion HUF (467 million EUR) were approved for
- technological improvements,
- the purchase of machinery,
- the modernization and renewal of horticulture,
- the construction of plastic and glass greenhouses,
- Plantations,
- the establishment of mushroom greenhouses,
- Cold storage facilities and
- the planting of grapevine vineyards.
In addition to cultivation, it is also worth highlighting that the Ministry is investing significant resources in the development and construction of processing plants, as the investments made will significantly benefit the vegetable processing sector. The Ministry of Agriculture has already launched the tenders for 2024 to develop the processing industry in order to increase the value of agricultural products.
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