Last month was also very dry, the seventh driest July since beginning of the 20th century.Continue reading
By the beginning of August, the area reported as damaged by drought had reached 75,000 hectares, with tens of thousands more hectares being added every week, data from the compensation system so far show. The compensation fund has been financially replenished and farmers have taken out drought insurance for 700,000 hectares, Zsolt Feldman, State Secretary for Agriculture and Rural Development, said in a press release.
The State Secretary pointed out that while the area reported for drought damage increased by almost 10,000 hectares in week 29 and 18.6,000 hectares in week 30, the total drought-stricken area increased by almost 29,000 hectares in week 31, reaching 75,000 hectares by the beginning of August. In the same period of the 2022 drought year, more than 1 million hectares of drought damage have been registered on the electronic reporting platform, as two years ago, not only spring crops but also autumn crops suffered considerable damage earlier in the growing season.
So far, half of this year’s drought reports are concentrated in three counties – Bács-Kiskun, Békés and Csongrád-Csanád (all in southern Hungary) – but significant damage has also been reported in Fejér (central Hungary), Szabolcs-Szatmár-Bereg (northeast) and Pest counties.
About eighty percent of the drought damage affects maize and sunflower crops.
Photo: Pexels
Zsolt Feldman added that the conditions for joining the agricultural damage compensation scheme have not changed compared to previous years, and the important steps for participants in the scheme (reporting and certifying damage, determining yield losses, applying for compensation) are the same as before.
From this year onward, EU funding has also been mobilized for the operation of the scheme, meaning a significantly higher amount of HUF 34.8 billion (EUR 87.4 million) available by March 2025 compared to previous years.
By way of comparison, the compensation fund paid out HUF 50.66 billion (EUR 127.3 million) to eligible farmers for damages in 2022, but only a quarter of this amount was originally available in the fund for payments related to damage events in previous years, the difference being covered by the government.
Mr Feldman recalled that in 2022, a maize farmer with 100 percent insurance who suffered 100 percent damage could receive up to HUF 250,000 (EUR 630) per hectare through the fund, but a farmer with insurance who suffered the lowest level of drought damage could also be entitled to a payment of HUF 60,000 (EUR 150) per hectare. In the same cases, uninsured farmers who did not have the possibility to take care of themselves could only receive approximately half of the above amounts due to EU rules.
Via MTI, Featured image: Pixabay