HUNGARY

Executive Summary

Hungary's fortunate climate - the high number of sunshine hours, plentiful rainfall, the relief situation, moderate temperature and good quality soils - created an opportunity for exceptional yields in the past for most agricultural crops. After the political changes at the beginning of the 1990's the structure of the Hungarian economy has changed rapidly and drastically and the effects can still be seen in the structure of the agriculture.

Significant amounts of oil crops are produced in Hungary. The major crops are sunflower and rape due to their well-mechanised production. Small amounts of oil are produced from soy, rose, hemp, hazel, raspberry, elder, currant, flax, maize, almond, poppy, pepper, castor, walnut and grape. Today the oil production in Hungary is controlled by one company, which produces 95% of the food-purpose sunflower oil, which amounts to 146,000 tonnes of oil annually. There are also 83 independent oil manufacturers that mainly use cold pressing techniques and their annual production is estimated to be between 1,000-2,000 tonnes. These small capacity factories are the producers of special oils, such as oil from poppy seed, saffron, Borago, Oenothera, maize kernel, wheat seed, peach seed, tomato seed, beech seed, pepper seed and oak seed.

The most promising non-food crop in Hungary is fibre hemp. Hemp is one of the oldest plants cultivated in the country and still has outstanding opportunities. Due to the ideal climate and fertile soils the situation for fibre hemp production is exceptional. Fibre flax used to be an important raw material before 1980, but since then farmers have ended the cultivation of flax due to its sensitivity to droughts.

In Hungary, the following major starch-containing crops are cultivated: wheat, maize, potato, rye, barley and oats. Of these, wheat and maize are used for non-food purposes. The amount of non-food starch production in Hungary is approximately 32,000 tonnes per year. About 61% of this is used in the paper industry and 8% is used in the pharmaceutical industry; the remaining amount is used as a raw material for flocculation agents. Starch is also used as a hardener in the textile industry or as a glue in construction.

According to the current Hungarian regulations there are 214 plant species being sold for medical purposes. Of these there are approximately 180-200 domestically cultivated plant species and about 50-60% of these herbs are native to Hungary. The annual domestic production of dried herb plants is 35,000-45,000 tonnes. About 75%-80% of total production is cultivated and the rest is collected. 10% of the medical morphine used worldwide and 30% of the morphine used in Europe is produced in Hungary at ICN Tiszavasvári.

Black elder is cultivated on approximately 750 hectares with an annual production of 30,000-40,000 tonnes per year. Other wild fruits are also cultivated on small areas as test cultures.