Survey of the market information needs of farmers in Hungary

Vágó, Szabolcs – Varga, Éva – Kruppa, Bertalan

Keywords: agricultural statistics, information distribution, farm survey, nonparametric tests

The survey found that while large farms prefer to use the Internet, medium sized and small farms turn to print media to keep themselves up-to-date on agricultural market developments. The research also reveals that farmers only occasionally research agri-cultural statistics.
The majority of respondents are unaware of the data available via the Agricultural Statistics Information System (ASIR) of the Agricultural Economics Research Institute (AKI). In the questionnaire only a small group of farmers indicated that they regularly follow ASIR statistics. To date farm statistics has been compiled mainly for administra-tion purposes and only to a lesser extent for informing farmers.
The survey shows that respondents most frequently search for sales data of fertilisers and pesticides. Information on crop yield predictions, sales of agricultural machinery and farms income is also popular among farmers. However, data on crop inventory, foreign trade and livestock slaughter data achieved lower response rates.

Full article