The comparative study of wheat growing results in Hungary and Austria

Hungarian agricultural production plays a significant role in the preservation of rural areas, in its sustainable development, and in lessening the regional differences. The value of our agricultural sector is primarily provided by the combination of favourable climate, good natural makings and growth traditions. The effectiveness of our crop growing greatly depends on our most important plant cultures such as for example the results wheat growing. In our country wheat growing has a traditional importance in the plant growing branch since centuries, it is grown on most farms. The basic purpose of our analytic work was to compare the results of wheat growing based on the production results collected by us concerning wheat growing in Hungary and Austria. Based on the comparative study we can say that in Hungary wheat is grown on an area five times as large as that in the neighbouring Austria. During the course of the study we concluded that in the two countries, the Austrian production averages per area unit are 29.30 percent higher on average. The unfavourable effect of the weather in the year has caused a significant shortfall production wise. In the case of Hungarian farmers it also caused a significant loss of income from their farms. As opposed to this, Austrian farmers weren’t particularly hard hit by the production shortfall because the Austrian procurement prices are higher than Hungarian average prices. It would greatly aid the income and competitiveness situation of Hungarian farmers if they were to receive an agricultural subsidy that is on a par received by Western European farmers. In Hungary the seed planting areas of staple cereals will not decrease due to tradition, but the distribution of the seed planting areas between particular staple cereals will change, depending on the procurement price and sale options. To prevent difficulties in sales from re-occuring it will be important to raise the domestic grain use, besides keeping up intervention buying up. In our opinion, this latter option can be realized primarily with 52 the expansion of live stock, and the increase of processing/use of staple cereals for food industry and energy oriented processing/use.