Brief overview of the crop production in the world and in Hungary

The crop production of the world went through considerable changes during the past thousands of
years; these changes were both quantitative and qualitative ones. Nowadays, in the world’s crop
production we can find either the primitive production carried out mainly manually by wooden
plough or the high-tech, intensive technology.

About one third of the area of Earth is land (~13 thousand million ha), about 11% of which is used for
field crop production (~1.4 thousand million ha). Other, agriculturally cultivated areas are the
grasslands (~3.4 thousand million ha) and the forests (~3.9 thousand million ha). The agriculturally
non-utilized area (~4.4 thousand million ha) accounts for one third of the land of Earth.The area used
for field crop production (~11%) cannot be enhanced in the future or only to a minimal extent. There
are only a few countries (e.g. Russia, The Ukraine, USA, Canada, Argentina, Brazil, etc.) which can
involve newer areas into field crop production, but the sizes of these areas are limited.

1.3. ábra - Table 1.

On the different continents of Earth – depending on the ecological and other conditions –the
proportion of areas utilized for crop production is different (between 6 and 16%).Please note that on
areas used for field crop production, the technological procedures are aggravated and limited by the
different environmental conditions (e.g. drought, lack of nutrients, frost, etc.).The technology can be
implemented under ideal circumstances on about 10% of the world’s areas utilized for crop
production.In another way, it means that crop production can be carried out under ideal ecological
circumstances on about 1% of the land of Earth.

In this respect, Hungary is in a more favourable situation.The distribution of our country’s area with
respect to the different types of land use isas follows:

~4,5million ha arable land

~2,0 million ha forest

~1,0million ha pasture

~0,2million ha orchard, vineyard, garden

~1,5million ha non-cultivated area

1.4. ábra - Table 2.

This means that field crop production can be carried out on about 50% of Hungary’s area – under
different ecological circumstances.One third of the 4.5 million ha can be considered as of good, one
third as of average and one third as of unfavourable ecological conditions with respect to field crop
production.Therefore, different, alternative crop production models have to be developed in
accordance with the different conditions.

In the world’s crop production, the following plant groups are the most important ones:

 cereal crops

 pulses

 oil crops

 root and tuber crops

 fodder crops

 industrial crops

 other crops

Among the 20 most important cultivated plant species, 6 belong to cereals, 4 to leguminous plants, 3
to oil plants. The 5 most important cultivated plants are as follows:
wheat ~217 million ha

maize ~162 million ha

rice ~154 million ha

soyabean ~102 million ha

barley ~48 million ha

1.5. ábra - Table 3.

Due to the different ecological conditions and application demands, the structures of the field crops
significantly differ from the sequenceof the ones cultivated worldwide.Hungary is markedly
characterized by a sowing structure with the dominance of cereals, which has a lot of negative effects
on crop production technologies. The five most important cultivated crops in Hungary are the
following:

maize ~1,3 million ha

wheat ~1,1 million ha

sunflower ~0,55 million ha

barley ~0,35 million ha

colza ~0,2 million ha

In our country, the size of ploughing area per capita is also favourable.In the world, this value is ~0.2
ha per capita, while in Hungary it is ~0.5 ha per capita. These factors result in substantially better-
than-average conditions with respect to agricultural, especially crop production.This fact is important
to emphasize, since at present, only 50-60% of this potential is utilized, although the arable land
means our homeland’s natural resourcewhich is available to the greatest extentamong all ones (other
minerals, energy sources, etc. are only limited).

Incorrectly,the importance of agriculture within a country is many times evaluated by its contribution
to the GDP. In Hungary, this ratio – according to different results – is about 4-5%, although the
calculation is not comprehensive.In addition to agricultural production, the values produced by food
industry and other agriculture related branches (e.g. fertilizer production, production of agricultural
machinery, shipment, etc.) have to be included into in the broader sense of agriculture.These, in total,
account for about 10-14% of the GDP.

National economy and food industry play crucial roles in rural development and the employment of
rural inhabitants. These are alternatives which also have to be taken into consideration while
evaluating the importance of the agricultural sector.

Although nowadays, as a result of globalization, the commercial relationships among the countries of
the world became very widespread, a responsibly thinking government has to pursue a kind of
economic policy that can provide the basic supply for the population of the country.Among these,
aliment and energy supplies are vitally important ones.

With the appropriate development of our agriculture, export can be increased to a great extent
improving the trade balance of our country. We have to attempt our agricultural, especially the crop
production potential to reachthe level that can provide the supply for the 15 million people.