Looking back at the weather events of recent years, it is increasingly evident that the likelihood, frequency and adverse economic, environmental and social impact of extreme weather events are increasing. Windstorms, hailstorms can occur in smaller or larger areas every year, and their local occurrence is unpredictable. More often there are more, even opposite, extreme weather events in the same area than inland and drought – even within a year. Agriculture is the most sensitive area of climate change affecting our land, one of its most important tasks is to provide food to the population. As the risks of agriculture grow, this task can be jeopardized. In addition to the specific negative consequences of climate change, the risks stemming from specific product markets, or from inappropriately chosen cultivation techniques, can be manifested as follows:
Direct effects: Extreme weather phenomena (eg: drought, volatile distribution of rainfall, inland waterfall, rainstorm); Quality problems, emergence of new plant health risks (eg fusarium fungus); Animal health measures (eg shortcuts); Macro measures affecting the product market (eg Russian embargo); Choosing the most optimal cultivation technology
Indirect effects: Fluctuating prices; Fluctuating farm incomes
Overall, the risks to agriculture that need to be addressed are increasing. The agricultural risk management system is currently able to cope with the damage caused by the loss of yields in the crop production sector.
Why risk management system is so important in Hungary?
- lack of sea exit
- big distances from important international markets
- big ratio of crop lands and low internal consumption
- continental climate effects great yield gaps and fluctuations
Moreover the Hungarian decision makers and other stakeholders recognized the need for a complex risk management system which can reduce administrative burdens and lack of spatial data. It was an essential element to develop a well structured and integrated system since Hungarian farmers would not join to complicated, more-actors system where they should look for different authorities with different kind of administration.
The risk management system has a long history in Hungary however the stakeholders noticed that without an integrated system the subsidies for mitigation of climate change disasters cannot be assured. Due to administrative burden and precarious financial system and voluntary basis farmers were not motivated to join the operating risk management systems since the base fund for compensation was not assured in case of bigger disaster. Because of the voluntary basis the system the shortage of funding was a general issue and the justifiable damages were not refunded.