Accelerated development also forces agriculture to adapt

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Digitization will only lead to progress if there is an openness to learning about it and its practical application, he added. The Ministry of Agriculture considers the spread of precision farming to be its own mission – emphasized the minister, adding that the Digital Agricultural Strategy adopted in 2019 also bases the improvement of the international competitiveness of Hungarian agriculture on this. István Nagy noted that the support system should also be used to encourage agricultural digitization. The raison d’être of this is also confirmed by the interest of the applicants, as the farmers applied for the call to support precision farming announced in July last year with demands of 212 billion forints, and more than 2,600 have already received the support, a total of 193 billion forints – he informed. The minister highlighted that the digital transition is also considered important by the Common Agricultural Policy (KAP), which has subsidies for the EU budget period until 2027, since data collection, information processing, automation, and robotization improve the profitability of agriculture, strengthen the safety of production, reduce the labor demand, contributes to the efficient use of environmental resources, nutrients, plant protection products, and in the meantime also reduces the environmental burden.

The president of the National Chamber of Agrarian Economy (NAK) also believes that renewal has begun in recent years, and since then Hungarian agriculture has achieved considerable success in its transformation

At the same time, Balázs Győrffy emphasized that the difficulties will become more and more complex, the changes in the natural and legal environment will constantly bring new challenges, therefore we must open up to other sectors, the knowledge and experience of more and more specialists will be needed. The most important thing in all circumstances will be that, from the cooperation of companies, developers, and agricultural professionals, innovations ultimately useful for producers will be created – added the president of the chamber.

MTI