Sustainability in hungarian viticulture - economic sustainability of vine growing farms in Hungary

Abstract

In our globalised world, humankind is increasingly realising that we have consumed the Earth’s resources, and it is necessary to change our own mind and attitude. Economic, social and ecological sustainability has become a fundamental goal in every sector, including vine and wine growing. Hungary is ranked 16th and 7th in the wine growing of the world and the European Union respectively (OIV 2022 forecast). Thus, global goals need to be increasingly enforced also in this sector in order to be able to keep our competitiveness. Markets are becoming more and more concentrated. New World countries are developing exponentially. So tradition and expertise are no longer enough to maintain and develop the sector. There is a need for collaborations and integrations, for which cooperatives and clusters serve as a model most of all. Since, however, their implementation is difficult in Hungary, it is necessary to put more emphasis on scale efficiency, cost minimization and sustainability. The latter one represents higher customer added value and meets the demand of conscious consumers. This study is intended to deal with costs and buying-in prices by farm sizes, and to show which sizes may be economically sustainable.