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Research and education in agrobusiness in Mosonmagyaróvár – the 200-year history
129-136Views:225In 2018, the Faculty of Agricultural and Food Sciences of Széchenyi István University celebrated the bicentenary of its predecessor’s foundation. Agrobusiness courses played an important role in the university’s agricultural engineering program throughout this major time period. The aim of this study is to examine how the titles, the content, and the significance of the courses changed during the institution’s important periods. Institutional history publications and the academic textbooks of great professors provided the basis of this research. Business administration, accounting, and agricultural estimation studies courses were already dominant in the first curricula. Later, courses concerning business and agricultural economics gained more ground and were accompanied by other fields of study: agricultural statistics, agricultural politics, agricultural history, and agricultural economics. During this 200-year period, the education of economics and other social science courses was done within the departments of agricultural economics and marketing, work organization and factory management, and social science and business operations, with the contribution of internationally renowned professors: Pál Sporzon, Richárd Suschka, Árpád Hensch, Károly Világhy. The Hungarian Royal Economics Academy (1874-1942) can be considered as the first prime of the agricultural economics education. From the 1900s onwards, the courses became more specialized, their numbers continuously grew, the disciplines expanded, and the number of departments increased. The second prime is the first decade of the 2000s, when besides the traditional agricultural programs, the institution started teaching economic agricultural engineers in its undivided 5-year training. They were the most popular agricultural engineers in the labor market due to their well-balanced knowledge in agriculture and economics, as well as their excellent leadership skills.
Having abandoned the economic agricultural engineering program, the institution currently educates, besides other agricultural majors, rural development agricultural engineers, whose skills the labor market does not know very well. The proportion of business related courses show a significant decline in the curriculum of traditional agricultural programs as well.
JEL code: N30
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10 year anniversary of the Journal APSTRACT: The history of an open access journal
5-8Views:251The idea initiating the birth of the journal APSTRACT was initiated by András Nábrádi, during a 2005 AGRIMBA1 executive board meeting held in Aberdeen, UK. AGRIMBA is an open international network of academics and professionals from universities and related institutions dealing with education and research in agribusiness (Csapó et al., 2010). Currently, the Network is especially active in Central and Eastern Europe (Heijman, 2015). The main objective of the Network is to set standards based on best practices for programmes it oversees and to accredit them on the basis of these standards. The International MBA Network was established in 1995, by founding members from Wageningen University, Scottish Agricultural College, the Czech University of Life Sciences in Prague, Warsaw Agricultural University, University College Cork and the University of Wolverhampton. Between 2000 and 2009, the following universities joined the Network: Humboldt University Berlin, the University of Debrecen, Arkansas State University, the Agricultural University of Ukraine, the Timiryazev Academy in Moscow, the University of Belgrade and the University of Zagreb (Heijman, 2015). The Universities of Belgorod (Russia) and Kazan (Russia) has also joined the network last year.
JEL code: A10
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Hungarian spirits pálinka as a “Hungaricum” I. Literature review and practical approaches
133-141Views:328The history of alcoholic distillation dates back over thousands of years. Spirits arrived in Hungary by the mediation of foreign countries, and were used as medicine in the royal court already in the XIV. Century. The first written presence of the pálinka as a word originated in Debrecen (1572). The quality and alcohol degree of these drinks were increased continuously, and rose to ’Hungaricum’ rank due to several factors such as the quality of the fruit stock grown in our country, the technical development of distillers and several centuryold professional experience. Mitterpacher, who distinguished the main parts of the equipment, reviewed the determination methods of alcohol content, and made a proposal for coating the inner surface of the cauldron with tin in favour of the preparation of the high quality product, played an important role in the establishment of the literature of pálinka distillation. Subcontract distillation, considered as an individual peculiarity in the European Union, developed during a long time in Hungary. It was facilitated by the regulation of distillery plants allowing the operation also for private persons from 1983. The fame of Hungarian national drink increased greatly when the meaning of pálinka was defined punctually: those drinks could be called ’pálinka’, which had 100% fruit content containing no additives, prepared in Hungary and their alcohol content was at least 37.5%.
According to conservative evaluation, more than 50% of the Hungarian adult population consumes pálinka occasionally. The majority of the adult population believes that a small amount of pálinka is good for health; many people use it for the alleviation of toothache, sore throat and stomachache. Pálinka has a mood-enhancing impact at social parties and pleasant family events, if consumed in moderation. This paper is an overview of the history of Hungarian pálinka. This is the first part of the article. In the second part we analyze cost-benefit circumstances, and we also deal with the main problematic issue, namely the effect of tax-free production in Hungary and in the European Union. -
The situation of agricultural sector in Hungary – trends and territorial aspects
Views:305Based on its geographical features, Hungary is basically an agricultural country. The proportion of the production area within the total area of the country is approximately 80% and the proportion of arable land is 60%. This makes our country one of the first in the European Union. In the EU, only Denmark and the United Kingdom have a higher proportion of agricultural land. Hungary accounts for only 3% of the total agricultural area of the EU-27 Member States, however, it plays a significant role in the production of certain products. (Harangi-Rákos, 2013)
In addition, the climate is favorable for agricultural production, which also strengthens the country's agricultural character. Throughout history, we have rightly been given the honorable name “pantry” (Marosi, 2009), which was true both within the Monarchy and Europe. In the socialist system the agricultural country became a so-called “industrial-agrarian” country due to the violent industrializations.
Beyond industrial development, the service sector plays an important role in the national economy due to its technology-intensive nature. In addition, agricultural production is still significant in Hungary (Lakner et al. 2020). The agricultural sector is significantly involved in the production of the gross domestic product (Fróna-Kőmíves 2019) and in the positive development of the export-import balance. During the 2008 world crisis, it was thanks to this sector, among other factors, that the recession that affected our country did not deepen. The domestic consumption is largely covered by domestically produced commodities (Csatáriné, 2019)
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Increasing palinka recognition with tourism and gastronomy
37-44Views:186The history of Hungarian palinka distillation dates back thousands of years. Palinka is a special product; its quality features are being increasingly recognized and appreciated by consumers. Our national drink went through considerable transformations in the past years, as it left the village environment behind and has become a Hungaricum, popular with young people. The authorization of home distilling in September 2010 was a key factor in its gaining ground in the country. In connection with this topic, the international practice of beverage tourism has been reviewed. After that, the Hungarian practice was examined, including the selection of palinka festivals, thematic palinka tours and palinka product ranges in 19 counties and in Budapest based on a total of 100 restaurants. Using SWOT analysis I revealed the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of palinka gastronomy and pálinka industry. Overall, it was found that the popularity of pálinka is increasing, but the thematic pálinka tours have not yet widened, and there is a need for more procedures supported by community marketing.
JEL Code: Z30, E83
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Land regulation in the European Union and Hungary
57-58Views:162Land, as it constitutes one of the bases of agricultural production, has a special position in the economic-judiciary surroundings of states. In Hungarian history, land ownership has undergone many radical transitions. The decade starting from the political and land regulation reform is a short time in land tenure. In spite of it, there have been several important changes in land ownership structure. In the 1970s and 80s, large agricultural firms, especially co-operatives and state farms, were common in Hungary. State hegemony was typical of land ownership and use, with rather small, privately owned parcels. Since privatization began after 1989, this tendency has changed, with land owned by farmers. In the following article, I am going to review the laws regulating land ownership and land use in Hungary and in the European Union.
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Measuring efficiency of intellectual capital in agriculture sector of Vojvodina
25-31Views:154During three-hundred-year history of the market economy, the main sources of wealth creation have changed from the natural resources (mainly land and relatively unskilled labor with the exception of the master craftsman), tangible material assets (buildings, machinery and equipment, funds) to intangible assets (knowledge and information of all types) that may be contained in the people, organizations, or physical resources. In the later period of the twentieth century, science has acquired the features of direct production force. The term direct implies that unlike the relationship which existed between science and production in the IXX century, where scientific advances was incorporated through the physical labor in the tools, which, in turn, created new value through the physical labor, the relationship between science and production has become all direct, immediate, because the scientific advances allowed the funds to be produced with less labor and allowed funds itself to become "smarter" and as such to require less human intervention and human physical labor in the final production process.As a result, the need for physical labor continuously declined with time, and the application of labor is moved from direct production to processes of preparing and organizing production. Also, a large part of today's knowledge that is used in production is not embodied in machinery, and the effects of this are immense.
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Externality effects of honey production
63-67Views:262Bee-keeping and honey production has a long history in Hungary. Honey is an important and healthy food of people and it can be consumed without any human processing. The honey production has important role, too. Some researchers say that if honey bee will extinct the humanity in the world would also extinct. It is true since plant pollination by honey bees is very important. It is confirmed by researchers’ studies that plant pollination by honey bees has significant positive external impacts on potential yields in orchards. Although the contribution of honey production to the GDP in Hungary is only a few per cent, other benefits play more important role. One of them is the positive external effect – mentioned above – and the other is the contribution to the biodiversity of the nature. This paper focuses on secondary research methods, gathering and evaluating data regarding the positive external impacts of plant pollination by honey bees as well as finding possible solution for the problem that bee-keepers have a lot of costs in connection with carrying honey bees to orchards, while farmers “only” benefit from the positive externality of plant pollination of their fields. To evaluate its economic effects a numerical HEEM-model was developed and applied for the Hungarian situation.
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The role of mental budgeting in healthy financial behavior: a survey among self-employed entrepreneurs
15-25Views:274Self-employed entrepreneurs (without personnel) manage their business and household finances at the same time. Both domains tend to interact with each other. In this study, it is studied whether and how self-employed entrepreneurs manage their finances. More specifically, the role of mental budgeting and time orientation in healthy financial behavior is studied. Mental budgeting is a way to manage expenses. It entails setting budgets, making reservations on budgets, compensating after too much spending on a budget, and non-fungibility (treating money as earmarked and categorized). It can be expected that self-employed entrepreneurs using mental budgeting strategies behave in a more healthy financial manner. Survey data were collected among self-employed people without personnel in The Netherlands. The survey contained, among others, questions about the company, time orientation, financial management, tax attitude, reported tax compliance, and concern or worry about the future. Questions were factor analyzed using principal component analyses. The resulting scales were used for further analyses. Regression analyses were performed to predict concern or worry about finances, financially restricting to and exceeding budgets, and reporting tax compliance. In this paper, two components of time orientation are distinguished: awareness of consequences and carelessness about the future. From these components, four orientation types of self-employed people were obtained. The orientation type focusing on long-term consequences shows more healthy financial behavior, whereas the orientation type focusing on the present and less on consequences shows less healthy financial behavior. Responsible and healthy financial behavior of self-employed entrepreneurs is related to focusing on long-term consequences, using mental budgeting, and keeping one’s budgets. Aspects of mental budgeting are predicting worry about business finances. Differential effects of mental budgeting were found on restricting one’s budgets, and exceeding budgets, respectively. Of two measures of future circumstances (work disability, pension), only pension measures were predicting worrying about finances. Mental budgeting was not related to tax compliance, except for fungibility. Past tax behavior is predictive of other (past) tax behaviors. Fiscal history measures prove to be correlated with present measures.
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