New research path for agricultural economics

Mészáros, Sándor – Forgács, Csaba

Keywords: agricultural economics, reseach trends, scientific progress, paradigm, transdiscipline, conferences.

International trends of researches in agricultural economics have been surveyed in order to help Hungarian research in closing up. Two different approaches have been applied: we tried to indicate long-term tendencies based on recent literature (mainly of the present decade) while short-term shifts in theme structure have been assessed based on international conference topics.
From the long-term new trends transdisciplinary researches can be highlighted which is a new target of the EU as well and has its own journal, research institute and international association. From another direction single and comparative analyses of agricultural and economical paradigms should be mentioned which can lay the foundation of attitudes or approaches usable in future researches. For examples, paradigms of multifunctional agriculture and that of globalised agriculture are worth to distinct attention, as are relatively new economic paradigms such as biophysical economics or ecological economics as well.
In connection with conferences we tried to discover how programs of international meetings could join in the mainstream of researches. This could help in the correct determination of directions of Hungarian researches. After the political transition presence of Hungarian scientists on international meetings undoubtedly reduced and this trend seems to change only in the last years. In this change the young generation of researchers and some institutions play a great part. The challenge is what further works are to be done in better adapting domestic researches to the mainstream and enabling Hungarian scientists in a more intensive involvement to international meetings and in living up to their commitments.

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