The opposition LMP party has called on the government “not to sell arable land” but lease plots to farmers willing to cultivate them ecologically. LMP co-leader Erzsébet Schmuck told a press conference on Thursday that the government had already offered 22,000 hectares of state-owned land for sale and was planning to sell another 40,000 hectares to increase budget revenues.
Schmuck said similar sales in 2015-16 had “primarily increased the large estates further” and predicted the same to happen now. “This runs contrary to the European Union’s goal of increasing ecological farming to 25% of the community’s total farming area by 2030,” she insisted. She added that currently a mere 6% of Hungary’s arable land was under ecological cultivation.