Business Dinner 2019: Focusing on agriculture

Trade magazine and the Chain Bridge Club invited Minister of Agriculture Dr István Nagy and Bonafarm CEO Attila Csányi to the traditional end-of-May Business Dinner, where more than 60 food companies and retailers sent their representatives.

Szilvia Krizsó
moderator

 The first topic was developing the country’s irrigation system. Moderator Szilvia Krizsó asked what the HUF 17-billion budget would be enough for in the 2020-2030 period.

Dr. István Nagy
minister of agriculture

Mr Nagy’s answer was that the size of irrigated land can increase by 100,000 hectares in just 2 years. He stressed that investments in agriculture add great value and quality to the market. Mr Csányi opined that the government had done its best to help, but extra funding will also be necessary.

The next topic was Hungary’s realationship with Brussels. Mr Nagy informed that the government agrees with the EU’s goals in environmental protection and biodiversity, but it is debated across EU member states how much funding farmers should get via the Common Agricultural Policey (CAP) in the next 7 years. Mr Csányi thinks that it can be seen in the strategies of Western European countries: what they want is less agri-funding, but more freedom to act at member state level – they intend to supplement the money lacking in the sector from national budgets. Mr Nagy said the government’s intention was to give something to each sector. In his view it would be vital to have stronger medium-sized companies. For large companeis the government will set up grant programmes – e.g. GINOP, Hungarian and EU money – because it is very important for the agriculture sector and the Hungarian economy in general to give something back to them.

As for the biggest challenges in agriculture, Attila Csányi reckons although the future is very promising, at the moment we are lagging behind, so the main task of the next 10 years will be closing the gap between Hungary and Europe in workforece, infrastructure, mentality and development work. István Nagy mentioned the problem of generation change: it doesn’t help havigng modern technology if there are no farmers. To solve this problem, the ministry has started several programmes. He told that the conditions are perfect in Hungary for livestock farming, so farmers can supply the country with enough meat. Bonafarm’s CEO added that the meat we produce would also be enough for exporting large quantites.

When discussig crop farming, the minister revealed that Hungary has the 6th biggest plant gene bank in the world. Those countries which are better with seeds and technologcial development can offset the negative effects of changing weather conditions more successfully. He believes that the development of fruit and vegetable farming is hindered by the fact that 70 percent of the sector is now in the so-called grey zone. One of the tools to change the situation could be integration, but its isn’t very popular yet, despite that most of the EU funding is available via the cooperatives of producers. Cutting the VAT has already worked very well in whitening certain segments of the agri-food sector.However, in the fruit and vegetable sector not all products will be affected by a future VAT cut. //