The paper summarises the restructuring of the Hungarian countryside after the changes of the regime.
The paper analyses the changes in the structure of rural societies by examining demographic processes on the one hand and economic changes on the other hand. And as a part of it the changes of land ownership, land use and development policy is discussed.
Demographic processes started by the changes of the regime, continued in the nineties, but the land use and land ownership patterns profoundly changed. In the nineties most of the socialist type cooperatives went bankrupt or were privatised. After the recession of the agriculture a slow recovery started which was followed by faster consolidation of land ownership, land use and of the whole agriculture in 2004. After 2010 the consolidation of the agriculture and the rural areas reached an equilibrium, although it can be criticized as something far from the optimal. Our paper presents the processes which lead to the present.
Keywords: rural restructuring, rural society, small scale agriculture, large scale agriculture, land use change
