Magazine: The race for funding will continue in the autumn

In September the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) plans to announce new grant programmes for farmers. From the Rural Development Programme’s HUF 1,300-billion budget (for the 2014-2020 period), the PMO has already published funding programmes in HUF 890 billion value. Labour-intensive sectors will have access to a lot of grant money in the period ending in 2020. In the new funding period young farmers can apply for grants from a HUF 37.75-billion budget.

For starting and developing non-agricultural activities, the PMO will have a financial framework of HUF 50 billion. The Rural Development Programme is a great success: according to a recent survey, every second farmers plan to participate in the grant programmes. In the spring of 2016 poultry, pig and cattle farmers could apply for funding from HUF 20-billion budgets each. Originally the programming period was supposed to be two years but it is likely to shorten now, because the number of applications was four times bigger than that of grants already in the first phase.

For food industry development there was a HUF 140-billion budget, but the value of applications reached HUF 200 billion. From the financial resources available to livestock farmers, it is important to mention the programme for restructuring the dairy sector. It has a budget of HUF 36.5 billion and this year 618 funding applications were submitted for 357,500 livestock, from which 19,000 are grazing cows. If Brussels gives its approval, from 2017 potato farming will be subsidised too, so it is rather likely that more Hungarian farmers will start growing potato again. Funding for potato growers is expected to be around HUF 61,000 per hectare.