Agriculture Minister István Nagy said on Friday that thanks to the governance of Fidesz, Hungary’s rural areas have undergone huge progress since 2010 that “everyone should see”.
Addressing the Conservative Political Action Conference in Budapest, Minister Nagy said the government had to “eliminate the anti-countryside leftist political legacy” which brought a dearth of jobs and resulted in the people moving away from rural areas and farmland falling into the hands of foreigners, and in the “dismantling of the food industry”. After coming to power in 2010, Fidesz “set Hungarian rural areas on a growth path: it adopted one of the strictest land laws in Europe, and protected, and will always protect, the interests of Hungarian farmers,” Nagy said. Strengthening the agriculture and rural areas brings about the prosperity of the whole country, he said. Secure food supply is a matter of strategic and national security, as proven during the coronavirus pandemic and the war in Ukraine, he said. Hungary is currently able to supply twice its population with fresh, safe food, he said. The government is working to establish a society based on a “functional division of labour” between cities and rural areas, he said.