Hungarian agriculture has undergone significant changes between 2000 and 2020. Only 25% of the 965 000 farms active in agriculture in 2000 were in operation in 2020. The number of farms engaged in crop production (273 thousand) has fallen dramatically, by almost half. Within this, fewer farms were engaged in arable crops and plantations and more in horticulture.
In 2000, there were 2883 crop production organisations and 270 736 individual holdings. In the following years, the number of economic organisations increased and the number of individual farmers decreased significantly. Both for economic organisations and individual holdings, arable crops dominate. However, the share of arable crops was higher in the case of the economic organisations, while horticulture and plantations played an important role in the case of individual farmers.
The common farm sizes of between 1 and 5 hectares were replaced by medium farm sizes, and these holdings accounted for 57% of the total agricultural area.
The share of arable land decreased from 83% of the country's area (7.7 million hectares) to 78.7%. The share of agricultural land decreased, the share of domestic forest increased and the share of reed and fish ponds remained substantially unchanged. The share of arable land increased, the share of orchards remained similar, while the share of kitchen gardens, vines and grassland decreased.
The area sown to wheat and maize is stable (1–1.2 million hectares), but in some years the area sown has fallen below 1 million hectares. The importance of both crops is shown by the fact that, despite fluctuations in area in recent years, a significant proportion of the arable land in Hungary is under wheat (22–23%) and maize (24–26%). The sowing area of sunflower has more than doubled and that of rapeseed has almost tripled. The share of these two oilseeds in the arable crop sector has increased significantly, with sunflower growing from 6.6% in 2000 to 15.2% in 2020 and rapeseed from 2.6% to 7.7%. The area under fruit crops and vines has declined sharply. Vegetables have experienced a similar decline as fruit crops.
The volume of crops increased steadily, with wheat and maize growing by 41.7% and 71.4% respectively compared with 2000. Sunflowers more than tripled and rapeseed increased almost fivefold. At the same time, weather extremes caused by climate change have become a growing problem in recent years, leading to an increase in the average yield per hectare. It ranged from 2.6 to 5.4 t/ha for wheat, 3.7 to 8.6 t/ha for maize, 1.6 to 3.0 t/ha for sunflower and 1.5 to 3.6 t/ha for rape.