State Secretary of the Ministry of Agriculture: New applications for sustainable agriculture

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Zsolt Feldman explained that producers must also comply with serious conditions in the areas of climate change, water, soil protection and soil quality, biodiversity and landscape, public health, plant and animal health, and animal protection. We are spending more than 1,000 billion forints on green measures in the rural development part of the Hungarian CAP Strategic Plan, within which about 20 thousand applications for support have been received for the Agri-environmental Management (AKG) program. There was also great interest in the tender scheme aimed at organic farming, for which almost 5,800 people submitted applications. The State Secretary reminded that a tender with a budget of 64 billion forints was issued for afforestation, while two calls were issued within the framework of the Natura 2000 program to maintain and increase biodiversity. Also among the green measures, several calls for tenders have been issued to support additional animal welfare requirements. In the changed climatic environment, our goal is not to increase constraints, but to increase opportunities for the farming community – said Zsolt Feldman. According to the State Secretary’s presentation, several incentives have been created after 2023 to spread more sustainable agricultural practices. An example of this is ecological water replenishment, which means the periodic flooding of agricultural areas with a water management water right permit for the purpose of water replenishment and infiltration by gravity discharge of water from surface water surplus or free water