Additional money for affected farmers

As it results from the agenda of the Council of Ministers published on Monday, on Tuesday the government will deal with the draft regulation of the Council of Ministers on the implementation by the Agency for Restructuring and Modernisation of Agriculture of tasks related to providing extraordinary financial support to the fruit and vegetable sector and the wine sector affected by unfavourable climatic phenomena.

Prepared by Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, the project assumes an increase of up to PLN 317 million in the pool of funds allocated to owners of fruit tree and bush plantations and vines affected by spring frosts. The assumptions for the project appeared in mid-August this year in the list of legislative and programmatic works of the Council of Ministers.

As indicated in the assumptions by the Ministry of Agriculture, the draft regulation of the Council of Ministers serves to apply the implementing regulation of the European Commission, which allocated Poland an EU aid budget of EUR 37 million. The Commission regulation provides that the aid must be paid before 31 January 2025, which – as indicated by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development – means a very short time to conduct the national legislative procedure and implement the aid.

At the same time, the Commission has provided for the possibility of increasing the budget available for payments to producers to 200% of the granted European Union aid. “Preliminary analyses show that crop damage caused by frost and hail was very high and affected a large part of the country, hence the Polish authorities have decided to increase the European Union budget allocated for Poland by national funds in an amount not exceeding PLN 317 million. National aid will come from funds for co-financing the CAP (Common Agricultural Policy – ed.) in the scope of subsidies from the earmarked reserve,” the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development informed.

As the ministry recalled, weather conditions in March this year were conducive to plant vegetation and contributed to its acceleration. As a result, on many plantations of fruit trees and shrubs and grapevines, plants began to bloom and fruit to form. In the second half of April, a large area of ​​Poland experienced extraordinary frosts from -6 to -8 degrees Celsius, which affected some orchards, berry plantations and vineyards in the regions with the highest concentration of these crops. In May this year, hail caused losses in raspberry, currant and strawberry crops and in orchards.

In the proposed regulation, the task of distributing aid funds has been entrusted to the Agency for Restructuring and Modernization of Agriculture (ARiMR). As reported by the Ministry of Agriculture, aid will be available to farmers who have a farm with a total area of ​​at least 1 ha, on which they grow at least one crop belonging to the fruit or wine sector, and on whose crops damage caused by spring frosts occurred between 15 and 30 April 2024 or damage caused by hail between 1 and 31 May 2024.