Abstract Background The relationship between shifts in agricultural land use, sowing structures, yield of major crops and food security necessitate studies to address today’s global challenges such as accelerating economic growthsustaining livelihoods as well as mitigating food insecurity and climate change. Land use changes and utilisation, and sowing structures directly influence both the availability and accessibility of food to the growing global population thus a need for sustainable strategies and policies aimed at addressing the need for adequate food. The contrasting temperate climate of Hungary and the tropical climate of Uganda leads to different land use categories, crop sowing structures, and production of major crops. Therefore, the objective of this study was to analyse the land use, sowing patterns, and crop yield changes for the major industrial and food crops in Hungary and Uganda. Methods Databases such as Hungarian Central Statistical Office, the World Bank, and the Uganda Bureau of Statistics, covering the period from 2000 to 2019 were the sources of the study data excluding the covid19 period and years later. The data were analysed using XLSTAT, while a trend analysis was performed using the Mann-Kendall test at a 95% confidence level (α = 0.05) using EVIEWS software. Land use and land cover (LULC) data from the archives of Uganda National Forest Authority (NFA) and Hungary satellite imagery from NASA EarthData and DIVA GIS was imported to ArcGIS pro for mapping. Results The trend analysis of the arable land area in both countries using the Mann-Kendall Test indicated a significant positive increase ( P = 0.0001 ) with the model fit value of 85.59% for Hungary and 83.42% for Uganda. Hungary’s agricultural land use slightly declined by 9.3% compared to 19.5% increase of agriculture land use in Uganda. While forest land increased by 15.3% in Hungary, Uganda recorded a 41.9% forest loss to other land use forms. The sowing structures in Hungary remained relatively stable, with minor reductions in maize and wheat areas, while Uganda had a substantial increase in maize cultivation by 40%, offset by a 15.4% decrease in banana cultivation. Maize yields increased by 20% (Hungary) and 38.9% (Uganda), wheat yields increased by 10% in Hungary while banana yields declined by 30% in Uganda. Conclusions Our study has highlighted how sustainability is at risk where increasing agriculture land in Uganda comes at the expense of forest virgin high productive land while strategic sustainability policies of Hungary have converted less productive agricultural fields into forest cover. A need for increased awareness and implementation of available land policies, international and national policy frameworks and guidelines among private agricultural investors, communities, affected land users and financial institutions in Uganda would streamline land use.
Ssemugenze et al. (Fri,) studied this question.