Hungarian Pig Sector: Actual Problems and Prospects for the Future Development

• Main Authors: Anna Dunay, Klára Vinkler-Rajcsányi
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Mendel University Press 2016-01-01
• Series: Acta Universitatis Agriculturae et Silviculturae Mendelianae Brunensis
• Subjects: agriculture; pig sector; pork production; Hungary; SWOT analysis; development programs
• Online Access: https://acta.mendelu.cz/64/6/1879/
• ISSN: 1211-8516; 2464-8310

Over the past decades, the Hungarian pig sector has undergone remarkable changes. In the 1980s, the Hungarian pig sector was the main pork product provider of the Eastern bloc, but after the political and economic transition, the sector lost its main markets and the size of pig herds decreased radically. The economic changes have brought negative impacts for all the players of the pork supply chain: the producers have been mostly affected, but slaughterhouses and the processing industry had to face new circumstances as well. The goal of this paper is to review the present situation and the current problems of the Hungarian pig-producing sector and to draw up the main prospects and favourable directions of the future by the findings of the SWOT analysis of the Hungarian pig sector and based on the proposed directions of the government’s new pork strategy. As the pig sector is an important pillar of the Hungarian agriculture and the rural communities, it is worth to summarize the sector’s present market position and to set those opportunities, which could give advantages for Hungary in the international competition. The paper concluded that the most prominent problems of the pig sector are caused by the economic and structural problems of the sector, based on the problem tree and sector’s SWOT analysis the main external and internal factors were detected, and the results were compared to some measures of the government’s pork strategy.