FBAMSZ: it is advisable to apply for the 2025 agricultural insurance premium subsidy by Thursday

They highlighted that for applications submitted after May 15, the amount of the subsidy will be reduced by one percent for each working day of delay, and after June 9, the possibility of applying for the subsidy for this year will be completely lost. They added that farmers can choose from the subsidized agricultural insurance products that have been available for a decade: Allianz, Generali, Groupama, and Agrár Biztosító, a branch of the Austrian Hagelversicherung. Based on summary data from the Institute of Agricultural Economics (AKI), the association also reported that in 2024, agricultural premium revenues amounted to 28.4 billion forints and damage payments to 9.1 billion forints in Hungary. Farmers paid over 24.9 billion forints in crop insurance premiums to insurers last year – this was 15.7 percent less than the amount in 2023 – of which 23.9 billion forints, or about 96 percent of the payments, were used as ex-post state premium subsidies.

The statement quoted István Békés, a member of the FBAMSZ presidency

He drew attention to the fact that farmers who do not have adequate insurance can only receive half of the benefit awarded from the unified damage mitigation fund. But even apart from this, the increasingly frequent weather extremes (frequent spring frosts, increasingly severe droughts) make insurance unavoidable for those who want to stabilize their income. The FBAMSZ presidency member indicated in the statement that in the current animal health situation, there are serious reasons to extend subsidized agricultural insurance to the field of animal husbandry, especially to insurance against quarantine diseases that have been in the news recently. While such a step would increase the financial security of farmers, it could also reduce state compensation obligations by strengthening farmers’ self-care.

They also mentioned that the first pillar in the system is the already existing damage mitigation fund, the second pillar is the insurance premium subsidy, and the third is hail damage mitigation

The fourth pillar is the agricultural crisis insurance provided by the state, which appeared in February 2021. This means that farmers now have the opportunity to cover their losses resulting from market disruptions, price drops or animal and plant diseases. Crisis insurance can be concluded not through commercial insurers, but through the Hungarian State Treasury for the given year until February 28 of each year, the association recalled.

MTI