The Hódmezővásárhely soil profile became the Soil of the Year

(Photo: AM)

Zsolt Feldman said that the World Soil Day has been celebrated since 2013 at the initiative of the UN, and it is necessary to draw attention to its importance and protection. Because 95 percent of the world’s food, directly or indirectly, is provided by the soil, but a healthy environment and clean water cannot be imagined without the “service” provided by the soil. From 2023, several mandatory regulations concerning farming and the protection of soils came into force, and additional incentive support was included in the Agricultural Ecology Program, which brings a significant change in farming practices affecting our soils, the state secretary indicated. Cultivation regulations to prevent further soil erosion in areas with greater slopes, encouraging the maintenance of continuous soil cover or recognizing no-rotation cultivation with financial incentives all aim to achieve this professionally very important goal for farmers.

Anikó Juhász, the deputy state secretary of the ministry, explained that almost 54 percent of Hungary’s land area is under agricultural use

That is why it is particularly important that we all see farmland and soil as an extremely important environmental resource and at the same time as an economic factor. The new Common Agricultural Policy formulates a number of sustainability aspects, which particularly affect the soil, and the purpose of the policy is to coordinate goals and measures. The initiative started last year in cooperation between the Ministry of Agriculture and the Hungarian Soil Society (MTT) continued this year, during which the Soil of the Year was chosen. A total of nine applications were received by the MTT, and the winner was decided on the basis of the votes of the general public. The winner was the soil profile from Hódmezővásárhely, which is this year’s XXX. Soil profile of the Hód-Fezőgazda Nature Trail of the Alföldi Livestock Breeding and Field Farmer Days.

AM