EU agriculture ministers discuss streamlining administration

European Union agriculture ministers met in Brussels on Monday to discuss ways to reduce administrative burdens, Zsolt Feldman, the Agriculture Ministry’s state secretary for farming and rural development, said at a press conference afterward.

Feldman said that administrative issues, such as amending national strategic plans, had impacted farmers to the degree that they had become political matters. He added that the Agriculture and Fisheries Council had discussed more flexibly managing those modifications in a streamlined procedure.

He said several member states had raised concerns about China’s anti-dumping probe of EU dairy products, while others pointed to challenges posed by the free trade agreement between the EU and Ukraine.

In discussing a report on the strategic dialogue on the future of EU agriculture, member states welcomed the goal of strengthening farmers’ position in the food value chain but expressed concern that the funding earmarked for achieving climate neutrality goals was part of the Just Transition Fund rather than common agricultural policy resources.

• read also: Hungary’s EU presidency aims at producer-friendly EU agricultural policy, minister says

‘If the environment changes, farmers must, too’

István Nagy, the agriculture minister, said on Monday on a podcast that “if the environment changes, one thing we can be sure of is that farmers must as well”.

Discussing with former president Janos Ader this summer’s drought in Hungary, Nagy said on the latest episode of Ader’s Blue Planet environmental podcast that it had not been as extreme as the “historic” one that hit 1.2 million hectares of land in 2022.

“Farmers reported damage across an area of 390,000 hectares this year, including 160,000 hectares in the central-southern Great Plain,” said Nagy. He highlighted the importance of developing the irrigation system and water storage facilities. He indicated the possibility of dedicating eight temporary reservoirs as permanent storage facilities with a potential capacity to store up to 5 million cubic meters of water.

The minister said that since Brussels had rejected Hungary’s bid for support for an irrigation development program, citing the protection of drinking water bases, it would be carried out using domestic funds.

He said drought had hit 40 percent of Europe so seriously that it had caused problems in countries with more advanced, cutting-edge technologies.

As we wrote earlier, drought damage is immense in Hungary.