The Status and Role of Smallholder Cow’s Milk Production in the Supply Chain in Hungary

The quality of agricultural products as food ingredients is a very important factor. Errors in the production of raw materials cannot be corrected or can only be done so at a considerable cost. Consumers expect food to be safe and they want food of the right quality (nutritional value, taste, smell, etc.) for their money. The more developed a country’s economy is, the more pronounced this demand becomes. Despite years of continuous quality improvement in the production of processed foods, resulting in increasingly high-quality and safe products, consumers are becoming increasingly suspicious. This is due to a number of factors: over-supply by the food industry, greater difficulty in navigating between foods, the rapid rise in allergies, food scares brought to the attention of consumers—which are occurring worldwide—and consumers’ healthier lifestyles, to name but a few. Thus, quality testing is definitely an important task. This is also true for raw agricultural materials such as raw cow’s milk. Humans have been consuming milk since ancient times. Its importance has only increased with the development of nutritional science, and its favourable composition and high/special nutritional value make it an important part of modern nutrition. It is, therefore, no coincidence that milk is the only food that accompanies man from the cradle to the grave. In our study, we seek to answer the following questions: What are the characteristics of small-scale cow’s milk farms in Hungary in terms of quality and competitiveness? How up-to-date are farmers’ information on quality control? What role can they play in meeting local demand? What special products can they enter the market with? How can they be integrated into the supply chain? A mixed methodology is used to answer the questions. In our secondary research, we use international and Hungarian literature sources to present the situation of the dairy sector in Hungary and its neighbouring countries, which are the most important from a market point of view. In the framework of our primary research, we conduct semi-structured interviews with the managers of small dairy farms in a given small region and present a potential HACCP process through the example of a medium-sized farm. The most important results of our study will be the results of our primary and secondary research.