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ITN Source
HUNGARY: The Hungarian government wants to spend millions of thier EU subsidies to exchange old Soviet tractors with modern machines
HUNGARY: The Hungarian government wants to spend millions of thier EU subsidies to exchange old Soviet tractors with modern machines
The Hungarian government wants to spend millions of their EU subsidies to exchange old Soviet tractors with modern machines, but not all farmers are enthusiastic about the plan. A more than 30-year-old tractor is pulling a sowing machine in the oat fields belonging to farmer Erno Kiss in the vast plains of eastern Hungary. But soon Kiss could have a new tractor under a Hungarian plan to spend EU money in a way that has sparked criticism in one of Central Europe's big grain growers. Kiss uses two farm hands to load seeds onto one of his machines -- an ancient sowing machine towed by one of his two equally ancient tractors. He farms 80 hectares and needs an extra man to stand on the back of the tractor to check that no seeds get stuck in the sowing machine which still resembles the one his father-in-law pulled with horses. The government wants to help farmers like Kiss, a majority of whom use a Soviet tractor brand still produced in Belarus, saying better machines will speed up harvests, reduce grain loss and cut costs. But many farmers are reluctant to replace the eastern manufactured models because even if they are inefficient, they are cheap to run. "These are machines that don't need much. I could even say that they were planned and made for hard soils such as this one here at Besenyszog. From a maintenance point of view, they consume more gasoline, but you can get spare parts for pennies and renovate them for almost nothing," Kiss said. Regardless of EU subsidies, many Hungarian farms have already begun to resemble Western ones. Sandor Gor, another grain farmer in the town of Cegled not far from Besenyszog, has a New Holland tractor made by U.S. -based CNH Global. He is keen on getting new, western machines as he has had a lot of problems with the old ones, which often are in need of repair. "It's very annoying when I have all the transportation vehicles in the fields for harvesting and the tractor breaks down after the second round and we have to postpone the job until we repair the machine. So that's why I would very much like to get new machines so I can do my job quicker and more reliably," Gor said. Critics say the two billion euros of European Union funds earmarked for machines through 2013 will lead to more overproduction in a country which already has flooded the EU's intervention stores with its excess grain. But Agriculture Minister Jozsef Graf, of the Socialist-led coalition government, says Hungary should be proud of its agrarian roots and badly needs to catch up with the western countries to enable them to compete with their peers. "In the past ten years we got very much behind other European countries in technology. Just one example: Hungarian farms have 2,200 euros worth of machines per hectare compared to over 5,000 euros in France and over 10,000 euros in Austria. This explains why we need to increase our competitiveness. In western Europe a big technological boom took place 10-15 years ago, here we need to do these technology improvements now," Graf said. But many farmers have little hope of being able to afford new machines, especially in eastern Hungary where the soil is hard and making a living is a greater struggle than in the western parts. "[The western tractors] would certainly greatly help in preparing the soil and sowing, but it is very difficult to make the money for such machines around this area," farmer Illes Nyeso said. Even with the new EU funds, farmers like Nyeso, will not be able to make enough money to modernise his machines.
ITN Source | April 26, 2007
