Kishantos Leaseholders Start Ploughing In Field Despite Legal Dispute

(MTI) – New farmers who won land leases in a state-run competition last year for the organic farm of Kishantos in central Hungary, have started work on the fields on Saturday, despite their leases being contested by the old leaseholders, MTI’s correspondent reported from the site.

The new leaseholders have started ploughing in the fields where the original owners had sown seeds.

Ferenc Bolye, co-chief executive of the Kishantos Rural Development Centre, which ran the farm, told MTI at the site that he had been notified on Saturday morning that tractors on the fields were ploughing in the winter wheat, peas and sunflower seeds that they had sown. He said the Centre’s owners and staff were present and they had notified the police.

Bolye said the new leaseholders were not “legally in possession” of the area, as there are several legal disputes still underway and court hearings were scheduled to start in the case on April 25.

Mrs Sandor Acs, the Centre’s other chief executive, said some 140 million forints (EUR 458,000) worth of organic plants were now being destroyed. She added that as the official handover of the land had not taken place between them and the new leaseholders last November, the Kishantos Centre’s farmers had continued farming on the land in “good faith”. She said the National Land Management Fund (NFA) had never officially settled with them.

Marton Bitay, State Secretary at the Ministry of Rural Development, said on Saturday that the NFA has nothing to do with the tractors’ activities in Kishantos, but that the new leaseholders are using the land legally. He said the Kishantos farmers had caused damage to the state by not letting the new leaseholders access to the land since last autumn, when their lease had terminated.