Agriculture Minister István Nagy highlighted the importance of a farmer-focused, farmer-friendly common agricultural policy in the period after 2027 ahead of a meeting of his European Union peers in Brussels on Monday.
Nagy, who is chairing the Agriculture and Fisheries Council as Hungary holds the rotating presidency of the Council of the EU, said the text approved by the Council acknowledged the need to boost farming productivity, while ensuring living standards for farmers, stabilising markets and guaranteeing affordable prices for consumers.
He said a discussion of fishing opportunities in the Mediterranean and Black Seas would takes place at the meeting, adding that quotas established on the basis of scientific results were “extraordinarily low”.
Reports will also be delivered on a forest monitoring framework, biomass-based development and the BIOEAST initiative for cooperation on food security and agricultural sustainability in Central and Eastern Europe, he said. The ministers will also hear the results of a European apiculture sector conference, he added.
The two-day Agriculture and Fisheries Council meeting will be the last during Hungary’s EU presidency.
A campaign to promote the consumption of locally raised pork is taking place ahead of the holidays.
At a press conference in Budapest on Tuesday, Zsolt Feldman, the state secretary for agriculture and rural development, acknowledged that pork was a staple of Hungarian cuisine, but said the annual campaign aimed to present something new to consumers.
Gergely Giczi, the deputy head of Agrarmarketing Centrum, said the campaign had been organized every year since 2021. He added that per capita Hungarian pork consumption has climbed by almost 10kg to 30kg a year over the past decade.
Tamás Eder, the head of the Hungarian Meat Industry Federation, said domestic hog stock had climbed by close to 100,000 to 2,600,000 over the past year, even as stock across Europe stagnated. He added that imports from Poland, Germany, Austria, and Spain weighed on the sector’s outlook.
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Cooperation in agriculture and trade must be further strengthened between Hungary and the UK, the minister of agriculture said in London on Tuesday.
Agriculture and trade relations between Hungary and the UK
István Nagy met Minister of State for Food Security and Rural Affairs Daniel Zeichner and Alistair Carmichael, the chair of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Select Committee, the ministry said in a statement. After the talks, Nagy said that despite the challenges affecting agriculture, Europe must be able to provide healthy food for its residents and maintain its role in global food supplies.
Nagy briefed Zeichner on the Hungarian EU presidency’s agriculture-related goals, and said that reducing food waste was one of the presidency’s priorities. Hungary set up a scheme in 2016 which has resulted in a more than 25 percent cut in food waste per person over 8 years, he added.
He said there was room for further cooperation in R and I and D, and in trade. The UK has remained a valuable market for Hungarian premium foodstuff, bottled wine, fruit, vegetables and animal feed, he added.
At talks with Carmichael, Nagy said Hungary was committed to promoting farmer-focused agrarian policies and competitive, crisis-proof, sustainable and knowledge-based agriculture for the future.
The Hungarian agrarian support system reflected social demand for making the environment better, for instance by further improving soil structures, he said. “Farming is not just work but a way of life which is also taken into consideration in legal regulations,” he said. All efforts must be made to strengthen safe food supplies and maintain a liveable rural environment, he added.
Agriculture Minister István Nagy called for effective measures to counter imports of fake honey after a meeting of his European Union peers in Brussels on Monday.
Effective measures against fake honey
At a press conference after the Agriculture and Fisheries Council meeting, Nagy said honey needed to be designated natural or artificial, while local beekeepers, at a competitive disadvantage, required more support. He added that Bulgaria and Romania had asked for protective measures to counter an increase in imports of Ukrainian honey that were depressing the prices of locally-made products.
Nagy said positions on fishing opportunities for 2025 discussed at the meeting were still “far apart” and augured “tough negotiations” ahead.
Nagy said that Ukrainian Minister for Agrarian Policy and Food Vitalii Koval had participated at the meeting and reported that 88pc of Ukrainian grain exports were now being shipped by sea, but highlighted the risks posed by Russian missile attacks on Odessa.
Nagy noted that the so-called Autonomous Trade Measures, involving the suspension of import duties and quotas on Ukrainian exports to the EU, were set to expire in June 2025 and pointed to the importance of future agreements on trade of farm products.
European Union agriculture ministers will discuss the situation on the internal market and 2025 fishing quotas at a meeting of the Agriculture and Fisheries Council in Brussels on Monday, Agriculture Minister István Nagy said.
Hungarian Agriculture Minister talks about “emergency brake”
Nagy, representing the Hungarian presidency of the Council of the EU, said the ministers would exchange views on the 2025 fishing quotas in the Mediterranean and the Black Seas.
He added that Ukrainian Minister for Agrarian Policy and Food Vitalii Koval would participate at a discussion of the situation on the EU’s internal market in the context of the war in Ukraine.
Nagy noted that an “emergency brake” for the import of some products from Ukraine, mindful of EU sensitivities, had entered force, and the ministers needed to debate the principles and ways of dealing with imports of farm products from the country. He added that the import of Ukrainian honey was an important issue for Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania.
The Hungarian government’s agricultural and food industry reforms boosted farm export growth by 6.4 percent in the first half of the year, the agriculture minister said on Sunday.
Farm exports came to 8.17 billion euros in the first seven months of the year thanks to the development funds earmarked for the sector, up 494 million euros from the same period in the previous year, István Nagy said on Facebook, adding that food industry exports rose by 7 percent.
Hungary’s top five export markets in the first half were Germany, Italy, Romania, Austria and Poland, accounting for over 54 percent of farm exports, the minister said. He said the share of processed products among farm exports rose to 74.2 percent from 62 percent in the period, while the share of raw produce fell to 25.8 percent.
Hungary considers agriculture a strategic sector, and is the only European Union country to have raised its national co-financing threshold to the maximum 80 percent for farming subsidies, Nagy said, adding that this has tripled the funding available for rural development.
Over the last three years, Hungary has spent 400 billion forints (EUR 979.1m) on the development of livestock farms, more than 100 billion on the upgrade of horticultural facilities, close to 230 billion on the expansion of food industry capacities and 180 billion forints on advancing precision farming, Nagy said. The government has also disbursed more than 55 billion forints among small farmers, he added.
Hungary’s agriculture minister said on Sunday that he was “baffled” by Tisza Party leader Péter Magyar and his supporters’ call for an end to European Union subsidies to grain producers, preserving it only for vegetable and fruit production, and added that it was “the betrayal of the countryside” and would cause an unprecedented increase in food industry prices.
Hungary’s agriculture minister slams Péter Magyar
István Nagy told public radio that all EU agriculture ministers were in agreement that the common agricultural policy of the EU should have an own, separate budget resting on the two pillars of land-based subsidies and rural development. “This would guarantee food sovereignty for Europe and secure food supplies in the future,” he said.
István Nagy, Hungary’s agriculture minister, said it was “a huge success” that the agriculture ministers of 26 member states had accepted the Hungarian EU presidency’s proposal on the future of the common agricultural policy. Work is under way to achieve full agreement in the matter by December, when “a document will be put on the table that the Commission cannot neglect”, he added.
Commenting on the strategic document prepared by the European Commission on the future of the EU’s agriculture, the minister said that whereas the former document reflected the position of “people with two feet on the ground”, the latter had been prepared by a professor who did not “have much to do with the agrarian sector”.
Hungary’s agriculture minister added that the reason the a separate Hungarian proposal had been drafted was that the document commissioned by the EC is unacceptable to many countries, including Hungary, and the farmers.
Péter Magyar in response issued a statement saying that Hungary’s agricultural sector had been destroyed by the incumbent government. He said the government was to blame for the desolation of the countryside and the disappearance of Hungary’s once so famous horticulture, vegetable and fruit growing sectors.
“For 14 years, the Orbán-government’s decisions have been determined by how it can get advantages and free money to its own oligarchs. Orban and his circles have systematically played state-owned land into the hands of their own oligarchs while they have let Asian battery plants occupy our best quality land,” Magyar said in the statement.
He said that under Nagy’s “reign” as agricultural minister, food price inflation was “in a European record” 62 percent while Hungarian farmers had not received any support to offset the unfavourable consequences of sky-rocketing raw material and energy prices.
The Tisza leader also criticised the minister for being unable to protect Hungarian bee farmers “against cheap fake Chinese honey”.
He said his party was promoting a complex village rehabilitation program and an agricultural reform to strengthen family farms and save the Hungarian countryside.
Agriculture Minister István Nagy urged policies to support the establishment of a “farmer-centred” agriculture sector at a press conference after a meeting of the Agriculture and Fisheries Council in Luxembourg on Tuesday.
Nagysaid streamlining farmers’ applications for support and taking steps to make agriculture output more predictable were necessary to achieve that goal.
He added that support for small and mid-sized farms, which would attract younger farmers, would be key to ensure food security in future.
Nagy said support for European Union farmers guaranteed EU citizens a secure and sufficient supply of food. That support cannot be reduced, he added.
The ministers reached an agreement on quotas for fish catches in the Baltic Sea for 2025 and discussed priorities for the future of the common agricultural policy (CAP) after 2027. They also touched on trade-related issues, especially with regard to China and Ukraine.
Sándor Farkas, a state secretary at the Agriculture Ministry, met with Laotian Minister of Agriculture and Forestry Linkham Duangsavanh in Budapest on Monday.
The Agriculture Ministry said the sides discussed crop and livestock farming, existing cooperation agreements, and ways to enhance bilateral ties.
Farkas said Hungary’s government could support joint projects in feed production, livestock farming, meat processing and food safety in the framework of tied aid programmes.
The talks also touched on trade opportunities and cooperation in education.
Hungary offers scholarships to 150 Laotian students a year to enroll at Hungarian universities, the ministry said.
The head of the Hungarian Agriculture Chamber (Nemzeti Agrárgazdasági Kamara – NAK) said at a press conference on Monday that the European Commission’s report on dialogue concerning the future of the European Union’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is “unacceptable.”Zsolt György Papp said the report served the interest of neither farmers nor consumers. He added that representatives from Central and Eastern Europe had not participated in drafting the report.
He said Hungarian farmers were opposed to phasing out area-based subsidies as well as to measures outlined in the report to reduce meat consumption.
Papp called for the EC to negotiate with representatives of farm sectors in the Visegrad Group who weren’t included in the process of drafting the report. He also acknowledged measures by the Hungarian government that had benefited farmers. “The Hungarian government has been a committed and good partner of the agriculture sector so far,” he said.
István Jakab, who heads farm association Magosz, called out Hungarian MEPs for applauding a programme that would “ruin European farmers”. He said the report outlined a shift to income-based subsidies and warned that unrestricted imports of Ukrainian farm products to the EU would “wreck the agriculture sector”.
The Hungarian presidency of the Council of the European Union strives to create a competitive, crisis-resistant, sustainable, farmer-friendly and knowledge-based agricultural sector, the agriculture minister said in Luxembourg on Monday.
How to achieve a competitive, crisis-resilient and sustainable agriculture?
Speaking to the media ahead of the Environment Council’s meeting, István Nagy said the meeting will focus on sustainability, underlining the contribution of sustainable farming and forestry to achieving the EU’s climate targets.
Nagy said the council would also have to establish a joint position on biodiversity for the United Nations’ COP16 conference, which will be held between October 21 and November 1 in Colombia.
The minister said he would also brief the council on progress on an agreement concerning the protection of cetaceans, and ministers would discuss agreements regarding desertification and droughts.
Anikó Raisz, the state secretary for the environment and circular economy, noted that the priorities of the Hungarian EU presidency were centered around competitiveness and environmental protection goals. These, she said, included preventing further pollution, preserving biodiversity, and taking the necessary steps concerning climate change.
Raisz said that today, the environment ministers will also discuss preparations for next month’s COP29 climate summit in Azerbaijan and the INC-5 session in South Korea.
The state secretary said the council would also review the EU’s chemical strategy and formulate guidelines for the next steps.
Hungary is committed to preserving its heritage in viticulture and winemaking, Agriculture Minister István Nagy said in Dijon on Sunday, at a conference marking the 100th anniversary of the International Organization of Vine and Wine (OIV).
Nagy said Hungary was proud to have been one of the 8 founding countries of the organisation.
OIVwill have a large role in tackling the challenges of the sector, and its 2025-2029 Strategic Plan may be a good foundation for that work, Nagy said.
In the past 3-4 years, “we’ve all had first-hand experience of the adverse effects of extreme weather,” Nagy said. R+I activity should be increased in order to support adaptation to climate change, as should be its funding, he said. The goal is to introduce new species and to cut the use of chemicals, he said.
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Output of Hungary’s industrial sector fell 9.5pc in August, a first reading of data released by the Central Statistics Office (KSH) on Friday shows.
Adjusted for the number of workdays — of which there were two fewer than in the base period — output was down 4.1pc. KSHsaid output of most branches of manufacturing had declined in August, although output of three had increased, with the chemicals segment showing the biggest growth.
In a month-on-month comparison, output slipped 0.5pc, on a seasonally- and workday-adjusted basis. For the period January-August, industrial output declined 3.8pc year-on-year. KSHwill release detailed data on output of industrial sector branches on October 15.
Commenting on the data, the National Economy Ministry said the economy as a whole was expanding, even though some sectors were performing well and others poorly. Hungary is in eleventh place among European Union member states in terms of GDP growth, and its economy is expanding at around 50pc over the EU average, it added.
It said the electricity, pharmaceuticals, chemicals and food segments
had grown in August and pointed to the impact of the weak performance of the German economy on the headline decline. According to 444.hu, Hungary may slide back into recession because of the low domestic consumption, the struggling industry and the underperforming agriculture.
Hungarians have cheapest, safest energy supply in Europe, says official
Thanks to the government’s utility price caps policy, Hungarians continued to pay the lowest prices in Europe for natural gas and electricity in September 2024, Szilárd Námeth, government commissioner in charge of the public utility cuts scheme, said on Facebook on Friday.
Natural gas is four times more expensive in Prague, three times in Warsaw, two and a half times in Bratislava and Bucharest than in Hungary, Nemeth said. In Stockholm, residents pay thirteen times more for natural gas than in Budapest.
As for electricity, Czech consumers pay four times more, Poles almost two and a half times more, Slovaks twice more and Romanians one and a half times more than Hungarians. Germans pay the highest electricity price in Europe, almost four and a half times more than Hungarian households.
Nemeth said the decision introduced in August 2012 successfully protected Hungarian families from the negative impact of the energy crisis caused by the war and the sanctions.
He said households were not obliged to take advantage of utility price caps, as they could also opt for market prices, “but nobody has ever taken that option so far”; not even those left-wing politicians who have constantly attacked and wanted to abolish the policy in the past twelve years. Opposition Tisza Party MEPs Peter Magyar and Gabriella Gerzsenyi also enjoyed the utilities price caps, that is why the Tisza party’s price-increasing utility price policy, “which serves the interests of America and Brussels, is hypocritical and lacks credibility”, Nemeth said.
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In a podcast, former Hungarian President Áder János and Agriculture Minister István Nagy revealed Hungary’s tactics for securing EU funds for climate adaptation, repurposing them for irrigation.
Hungary’s water crisis
While Hungary battles severe flooding in the Danube Valley, much of the country still suffers from drought, Telex writes. The government has long promoted the need to store more water, but progress remains slow. Agriculture, being heavily affected by drought, was a focal point of Áder’s interview with Nagy. Following his presidency, Áder turned to environmental advocacy through his Kék Bolygó Foundation (Blue Planet Foundation). In the podcast, he and Nagy discussed recent floods and then shifted the conversation to drought management.
EU funding: irrigation challenges
Nagy mentioned that the EU does not support irrigation projects financially. When Hungary applied for EUR 1 billion under the EU’s long-term budget, the request was rejected due to a rule protecting drinking water sources.
Áder highlighted that irrigation could be developed using retained or surface water, rather than drinking water. Nagy explained that Hungary adjusted its approach, no longer referring to “irrigation” but to an “ecological water replenishment system.” Áder humorously suggested that the term “biodiversity” works well with EU institutions. This change in terminology helped Hungary secure funds from the Environmental and Energy Efficiency Operational Program Plus (Környezeti és Energiahatékonysági Operatív Program Plusz, Kehop).
Kehop wasn’t designed for irrigation projects but for climate adaptation and water conservation. Although water storage for irrigation can have ecological benefits, it’s a stretch to align it with Kehop’s objectives. However, other funds, like the Common Agricultural Policy (Közös Agrárpolitika, KAP), do support irrigation. In July, Nagy announced that over 1,200 irrigation projects had received EU funding through the Ministry of Agriculture.
Blurring the lines between goals
Some projects, such as water replenishment plans for areas like Homokhátság and Nyírség, mix ecological goals with economic ones. Áder and Nagy demonstrated how infrastructure projects can be framed as environmentally friendly, even when they don’t strictly align with climate adaptation.
This shift in terminology isn’t new. A 2019 law on irrigation communities now refers to them as sustainable water management communities. While the change in language signals a shift towards sustainability, it doesn’t guarantee that irrigation projects are truly environmentally sustainable. Hungary’s Recovery and Resilience Plan also reframed irrigation systems as water replenishment systems in later drafts.
Conclusion
Despite these efforts, not all “greenwashed” projects pass EU scrutiny. As one source of Telex noted, “None of the projects labelled as green under the Recovery and Resilience Facility passed the EU’s approval, causing a significant loss of EU funding for Hungary’s water management sector”.
The Ministry of Agriculture has yet to respond to inquiries about the podcast remarks and whether such tactics may be harmful to genuine environmental efforts.
Find the interview below (unfortunately, there are no English subtitles):
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.
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.
Hungary’s EU presidency is focusing on how the European Union’s agricultural policy can be farmer-friendly and farmer-centred, Minister of Agriculture István Nagy said ahead of an informal meeting of EU agriculture ministers in Budapest on Tuesday.
Nagy called for measures to ensure that EU agriculture is competitive, crisis-proof, sustainable and knowledge-based. He said the participants of Tuesday’s meeting have to find a solution to simplify the payments of the Common Agricultural Policy, address issues of the green transition and how to make EU agriculture more sustainable. Nagy also called for simplifying crisis management measures so that all member states can quickly and flexibly compensate farmers for damages caused by climate change.Read also:
The size of the areas declared for drought damage reached 390,000 hectares by early September, Minister of Agriculture István Nagy said at the opening of agriculture and food exhibition Bábolnai Gazdanapok on Thursday.
The maize crop has been damaged by drought on 235,000 hectares and the sunflower seed crop on 125,000 hectares, the minister said. And the 160,000 hectares declared in the Southern Great Plain shows the special vulnerability of the region, he added.
In recent years, the damage mitigation fund has been topped up to HUF 35bn from state, producer and EU sources. Farmers took out drought insurance with premium subsidies for 715,000 hectares this year, he said.
Tenders to be called soon as part of the Rural Development Programme will support the introduction of water-saving irrigation techniques, the optimisation of irrigation systems and the development and reconstruction of water-saving irrigation infrastructure.
So far, more than 1,200 irrigation projects have been supported within the framework of the programme with a combined HUF 177bn, the minister said.
Two maps of the shocking transition of the Carpathian Basin in months from a green garden to a desert-like place:
Dawn heat records broken on Thursday
Thursday saw the Budapest and national dawn heat records broken, HungaroMet said on its website on Friday. The Tatabánya Dózsakert station measured 22.9 degrees Celsius on Thursday morning. The highest dawn temperature, 21.8 degrees, so far was measured in Pecs in 2012, HungaroMet said.
The weather station in the 11th district of Budapest measured 21.8 degrees, the highest measured in the city on this day. The earlier Budapest record was 20.8 degrees, measured at the same station in 2011.
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Sándor Farkas, state secretary at the ministry of agriculture, opened the 33rd Farmer Expo, an annual international exhibition and fair of agricultural producers, in Debrecen, in eastern Hungary, on Thursday.
In his opening address, the state secretary said the government would “stand by farmers in all situations and seek dialogue with them.”
Farkas said rural development projects until 2027 would benefit from nearly 2,900 billion forints (EUR 7.3bn) in European Unionfunding and “an outstandingly high proportion of co-payment” from domestic coffers. The programme facilitates “the highest form of assistance so far for rural development, farmers, and food producers,” he added.