“Those who live within our hearts do not pass away, though shadows, dreams and years may drift by.”
​​​​Motto: Gyula Juhász: Consolatio

It is with a profound sense of sadness that I fulfil my duty in writing this tribute.

When commemorating a person’s life, we often make the mistake of focusing solely on the deceased's achievements. Yet a life and career are shaped by the combined influence of many people who set an individual on their path, encourage and support them, and help them choose between the various crossroads encountered along the way. This does not diminish the merits of the person we remember, for true merit lies in how one makes use of the talents received, seizes the opportunities offered, and uses the results achieved. In this respect, Professor Emeritus István Fehér set an exemplary standard: he consistently seized the opportunities that came his way, pursued his goals with diligence and perseverance, and always placed his achievements at the service of the communities around him.

Dr István Fehér was born on 8 May 1942 in Pilismarót, where he completed his primary education between 1948 and 1956. In 1956, he continued his studies at the Táncsics Mihály Agricultural Technical School in Vác. His love of agriculture came from his grandfather, a middle peasant who farmed 7 hectares, growing crops and raising livestock. From childhood—already at the age of thirteen—István took an active part in farm work, including ploughing the fields to help his elderly grandfather. The positive experiences he gained there stayed with him throughout his life and motivated his professional work. It was there that he learned both to love and to respect agricultural work. His entire professional career was devoted to agriculture and agribusiness: this was where he began, and where he concluded his career, remaining faithful throughout to his profession and to himself.

His professional journey was typical of a first-generation Central European Hungarian intellectual. He was the first person in his family to complete secondary school, graduate from university, and earn a doctoral degree, something that always reminded him of his responsibilities. He, too, had to overcome political obstacles: he was only allowed to enrol at an agricultural technical school after his mother joined the local agricultural cooperative. This was not an isolated incident at the time; rather, it was a widespread phenomenon. It was probably one of the reasons why, out of his twenty classmates in primary school, he was the only one to choose a career in agriculture.

Between 1960 and 1965, he studied Animal Husbandry at the Gödöllő University of Agricultural Sciences (predecessor of MATE), completing the traditional five-year university programme. He wrote his thesis under Dr. János Bögre, the legendary professor of poultry breeding, on poultry production and waterfowl. Even at this early stage, it became apparent that he would be drawn throughout his life to strategic and innovative areas within the agricultural sector. A major source of inspiration was László Komló’s book Industrialised Agriculture, in which the industrialisation of poultry production was identified as one of the key fields of development at the time. His interest in this innovative area of agriculture remained with him throughout his life.

As a student assistant, he participated in the department’s research activities, completed postgraduate specialist engineering studies, and regularly attended professional study tours. Throughout his career, he became an enthusiastic advocate of such programmes, organising study tours for both Hungarian- and English-language programmes and for international students.

From there, he received a scholarship to the Hungarian Poultry Production Company, where he worked as an economic adviser between 1965 and 1971. He began learning French, and later Dr József Lőrincz, the legendary professor of crop production at Gödöllő University of Agricultural Sciences and then Head of the Agricultural Department of the Ministry of Agriculture, recommended and supported him in obtaining a French university scholarship at the University of Montpellier, one of the oldest research universities in Europe. During his time in France, he spent a year improving his French and retraining as an agricultural economist through a one-year postgraduate programme at the Mediterranean Agronomic Institute. His interest in the Francophone world and the close cooperation he established with the University of Montpellier accompanied him throughout his life.

He subsequently joined the National Council of Agricultural Cooperatives, where he worked as an economic adviser from 1971 to 1979, and later Agrober–Agroinvest, where he served as a director between 1979 and 1982 and developed an extensive international network of corporate contacts. His international scientific advisory activities were wide-ranging and extended over several decades. He worked with organisations including the FAO, World Bank, ILO, UNIDO, USAID and the European Union. He participated in institutional development projects in numerous developing countries, including Niger, Algeria, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan, as well as in Central and Eastern European countries such as Poland, Bulgaria, Croatia, Latvia, Lithuania, Albania, Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia.

In 1989, at the time of Hungary’s political transition, he began his university career at the Institute for Management Training of the Gödöllő University of Agricultural Sciences, initially as a university adviser from 1989 to 1997. From 1997 to 2005, he worked at the Institute of Agricultural and Regional Economics of the Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences as an associate professor and head of department. He subsequently joined the Institute of Marketing as a full professor.

It was in higher education that he achieved some of his greatest successes. He believed that the guidance he had received from his ancestors, teachers and university professors had not been given to him as a permanent possession, but rather as something entrusted to him temporarily and which therefore had to be passed on to the next generation.

During his university career, one of his important professional mentors was Dr Károly Kocsis, the only rector in Hungary to have been directly elected by the university’s academic staff. At the Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences, within the Centre for European Studies, Dr Kocsis introduced the teaching of European Union studies, an area in which he and Professor Fehér complemented one another particularly effectively.

Before his retirement, Professor Fehér’s principal teaching and research responsibilities included the development of courses and teaching materials on the European institutional system between 2000 and 2014 and on international trade institutions between 2002 and 2014. His teaching-material development covered fields such as agricultural and environmental policy, fundamentals of the European Union, the institutional system of the European Union, EU project management, the EU’s integrated rural development policy, product marketing, international agricultural trade and food marketing.

He taught these subjects and delivered professional lectures successfully in Hungarian, French and English. He was actively involved in English-language BSc, MSc and PhD programmes, in the development of foreign-language teaching materials and course syllabi, and in the training and mentoring of new and young lecturers. He taught three subjects in English to groups of 50–60 international students, while his Hungarian-language courses typically attracted between 150 and 250 students per academic year.

Through his international network, he worked as a visiting lecturer at several higher education institutions, including ESA Purpan Toulouse, ESA Angers, ESITPA Rouen and SupAgro Montpellier in France, as well as Murray State University, the University of Tulsa and Tulsa Community College in the United States. Alongside teaching, he continuously organised research cooperation and staff and student exchange programmes, including opportunities for Hungarian doctoral students of the Doctoral School of Management and Business Administration.

At every level of higher education—BSc, MSc and PhD—he taught and supervised students with exceptional dedication. His greatest success, however, was perhaps in doctoral education. After earning his PhD in economics in 1997 and completing his habilitation in 2006, Dr István Fehér became a core member of the Doctoral School of Management and Business Administration in 2001. As a doctoral supervisor, he successfully guided the work of more than ten PhD students.

He was also regularly involved in all aspects of doctoral education, serving as chair or member of comprehensive (complex) examination committees, chairing and reviewing dissertation workshop defences, and acting as chair, committee member or opponent at final PhD defences. He performed these responsibilities with great enthusiasm until the very end, even when he was already seriously ill. He firmly believed that learning and knowledge make both people and the world better.

He continued to undertake these duties even when his illness made them extremely difficult. This was also the occasion of our final meeting, when he participated in the defence of our colleague Ágnes Treutz. By then he had to be brought from the hospital and taken back afterwards, yet with almost superhuman strength he remained throughout the entire defence.

In addition to supporting his own doctoral students, he continuously helped students supervised by colleagues. He assisted them in establishing professional contacts, provided research ideas and helped them shape their dissertations into their final form. The PhD students of the Institute of Marketing were able to participate in many study abroad semesters thanks to Professor Fehér. He was firmly convinced that both practical experience at home and international experience were essential prerequisites for a successful academic career.

Professor Emeritus István Fehér regarded higher education as an inseparable unity of teaching, research and consultancy, and this principle guided his work.

Alongside his teaching responsibilities, he regularly conducted research in fields including the operation of cooperatives, agricultural and rural policy, rural tourism, agriculture and trade, development of agricultural institutions, and the competitiveness and supply systems of the food economy.
On several occasions during his career, he temporarily moved into agricultural policy and public administration. From 1997 to 1999, he served as Head of the Ministerial Cabinet Office at the Ministry of Agriculture, and from 2004 to 2005 as Deputy State Secretary at the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development. Yet even during these periods he never severed his links with higher education and returned to university life with great enthusiasm on both occasions.

In addition to his university activities, he played an extensive role in professional and public organisations. Among other positions, he was a member of the executive body of the Farm Organisation Section of the Hungarian Agricultural Association between 1975 and 1985; a board member of the Hungarian Farm Management Development Foundation between 1991 and 2004; Vice-President of the Hungarian Economic Association between 1991 and 2009; and a member of the European Association of Agricultural Economists between 1995 and 2015, the International Association of Experts in Rural Tourism between 1989 and 2000, and the International Farm Management Association between 1997 and 2026. He was also a member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences between 1997 and 2026, and served on the editorial board of the journal A Falu between 1992 and 2000. From 2008 to 2015, he regularly contributed to the work of the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Research.

His institutions consistently recognised the value of his work, and he received numerous awards and distinctions, including the Gold Wreath Badge of the Hungarian Agricultural Association in 1982; the Outstanding Cooperative Worker distinction in 1998; the Officer grade of the French Order of Agricultural Merit in 1998; the Széchenyi Professorial Scholarship between 2002 and 2005; the Apáczai Csere János Award in 2010; the Pro Facultate Award of the University of Debrecen and an honorary diploma in 2012; the Pro Negotio Universitatis Award in 2015; and a Golden Diploma and the Medal for the Doctoral School from Szent István University in 2018.

During more than thirty years of consultancy work, he made a significant contribution to institutional development. He gained three years of senior public administration experience in Hungary as Head of the Ministerial Cabinet Office for Agriculture and as Deputy State Secretary at the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development. He also worked as a consultant in the modernisation of agricultural public-administration institutions in several countries, including Latvia, Lithuania, Georgia, Moldova, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Croatia and Kazakhstan.

Our professional relationship truly began in 1989, when István Fehér joined the Institute for Management Training at Gödöllő University of Agricultural Sciences. He was one of the few people there who actively represented and organised cooperation. He invited me to participate in an international educational project, which was successfully completed. From then on, we remained in continuous contact and worked together on many projects.
He always believed in equality in both personal and professional relationships—whether with university and faculty leaders, lecturers from his own or other faculties, or students—because he believed that only relationships based on equality could inspire mutual achievement. He found arbitrary leadership and situations of dependency particularly difficult to tolerate, and this sometimes brought him into conflict with others.
On one such occasion, in 2005, he approached me in my capacity as Director of the Institute of Marketing and told me that he wished to join us. Decisions at the Institute of Marketing were made by consensus, and following a unanimous vote, his transfer request was submitted. As so often before, we made an excellent decision. We gained a lecturer and colleague who more than justified the trust placed in him.

He became the Institute of Marketing’s most successful builder of international teaching and research relationships and one of the pillars of the Institute. He always built relationships on cooperation, never ran out of new ideas, and showed boundless willingness to help not only members of the Institute but also colleagues elsewhere, both within and outside the University.

Together, we successfully applied for and implemented numerous educational projects, including Tempus, Leonardo, PHARE, CEEPUS, Grundtvig and FAO programmes—a total of thirteen projects.

Throughout his professional career, his wife, Klári, was his emotional and professional support and a devoted mother to their children, István and Nóra. She provided the secure family background that enabled him to pursue such a rich and distinguished career.

Dear Professor Emeritus Dr István Fehér, whom we respected so deeply both as a person and as a professional, we must now say farewell.
Your former colleagues at the Institute of Marketing and your former PhD students bid you farewell. The lecturers and students of your present academic home, the Institute of Agricultural and Food Economics, bid you farewell. So do the lecturers of the University’s other institutes, the leaders of the institutes and the University, the lecturers and former students of the Doctoral School of Management and Business Administration and the Doctoral School of Economic and Regional Sciences, your former colleagues and associates outside the University, and the lecturers, researchers and students of universities abroad.

Through your personality and enthusiasm—and now through their absence—you leave behind an enormous void, one that may be impossible to fill.

You also set an example of how, even after retirement, a person can continue to serve their community, and of how, despite illness, one can still demonstrate strength and give strength to colleagues.

We will always remember your optimistic and mischievous smile, with which you seemed able to overcome even the most difficult obstacles with ease, all but the final one.

Dear Pista, rest in peace. You were a great role model, and you have left us much to preserve and to follow.
May the good Lord embrace you and grant you a peaceful and serene life beyond death. You deserve it.
Your earthly tasks are complete, your strength has been spent, and your time has come to an end.

Rest in peace.
We will cherish your memory.
Gödöllő, 2 July 2026

Dr József Lehota, DSc
Professor Emeritus
Institute of Agricultural and Food Economics