Magazine: Common Agricultural Policy 2020: development, the new generation and worries

HG Media and Haszon Agrár Magazin organised a conference in May, titled ‘In focus: Common Agricultural Policy 2020’.

Miklós Zsolt Kis
secretary of state for
rural development
Ministry of Agriculture

Hungary’s agricultural output was 3.6 percent bigger in 2018 than in 2017 – revelaed Miklós Zsolt Kis, secretary of state for rural development of the Ministry of Agriculture in his presentation. He also told that the proportion of products with high addede value keeps growing. The state secretary stressed that thanks to the government investing several hundred billion forints in the agri-food sector, the growth is likely to continue. In his view the main priorities are making the income of farmers more stable, improving the country’s irrigation system, increasing competitiveness and making way for the new generation.

Dr. József Viski
deputy state secretary of rural development programmes

Dr József Viski, deputy state secretary of rural development programmes summarised the results and the latest issues of the rural development programme. In the project that started in 2015, about half of the funding was used for investment purposes. Hungary and the EU make HUF 1,370-1,380 billion available to farmers and there have been more than 187,000 successful applications for funding. Participants of the roundtable discussion were Fülöp Benedek – head of OTP’s Agriculture Directorate, Attila Simon – head of MKB Agriculture Partner, Zoltán Fórián – senior agriculture expert of Erste Bank, Miklós Andorka – stategic director of MAPI and Dávid Hollósi – agriculture director of Takarék Group. They agreed that farmers will always be needed as everyone must eat, therefore the EU is ‘going backwards’ by cutting the budget available to them. The experts said farmers must prepare for the changes as soon as possible.

Csaba Juhász
country manager
Glencore Agriculture
Hungary

Csaba Juhász, country manager of Glencore Agriculture Hungary Kft. talked about the approaching changes in agricultural logistics. He told that the Hungarian State Railways had failed to invest in development for transporting agri-food products and the storage capacity of domestic warehouses was small. As for road transport, problems include rising service prices and the drastic increase in driver salaries. Other conference topics included digitalisaiton and automation issues. Zoltán Mátrai talked about the SmartFarmer project and precision farming. Imre Szabó, the owner of BoldAgro used the example of his own farm to show how to get the most out of farming from an agricultural, culinary and touristic perspective. //