'My goal is to feed my family even if the nearby shops go empty'
Despite business taking a hit in the past year, a Hungarian farmer takes a gamble on regenerative farming.
What's your money worth? A series from the front line of the cost of living crisis, where people who have been hit hard share their monthly expenses.
Name: Bálint Rudics
Age: 30
Occupation: Farmer
Lives with: Wife Karolina (41), stepson Sólyom (18), daughter Bóbita (1), a dog, a cat and five pet sheep.
Lives in: Aparhant, a village of just over 1,000 inhabitants in central southern Hungary, located 180km (112 miles) from the capital, Budapest.
Monthly household income: The family’s monthly income is 530,000 Hungarian forints, or $1,442. Bálint, who is one of four owners of a family farm, receives 250,000 forints ($680) every month. His wife, a nurse working with people with disabilities, is currently on maternity leave and receives a monthly benefit of 280,000 forints ($762). The average salary in Hungary after tax is 352,000 forints ($958).
Total expenses for the month: 730,000 forints ($1,987). The couple usually try to limit their spending to 400,000 forints ($1,088) a month so that they can put money towards renovating their house but in September, they spent more than usual as Karolina had laser eye surgery.
Every day at about 10am, Bálint stops by his grandparents' house after a few hours of work on his family's farm for a cup of tea or coffee. There, a framed picture above the television in the living room shows a large family: six grandchildren, including Bálint, and a growing army of great-grandchildren.
Bálint spent most of his childhood in his grandparents' large, tidily kept home. It is there in Aparhant where he fell in love with farming.
His grandfather toiled on state-owned collective farms until he bought his own land to farm in 1994, when Bálint was 1. When Bálint wasn’t in school, he worked alongside his grandfather.
After his grandfather’s health deteriorated following years of hard work in the fields, Bálint took over in 2019. His aunt manages the finances. His grandparents, also partners in the family business, “always have the last word” when it comes to any decisions, Bálint says with a sigh and a smile.
Regenerative farming
Bálint is younger than many residents in the area, and doesn’t have any friends his age who live nearby; most of them have moved to big cities, or abroad.
Over the past few years, the area has become popular among pensioners from the Benelux countries - Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg - due to the good quality of life, clean air, fresh produce, low crime rate, and inexpensive property prices. While driving through villages en route to his family’s fields, Bálint points out newly renovated, neat houses with lush front gardens and “For sale” signs in Dutch. He leans close to the wheel, scanning the road for potholes, and waves at an older man driving a tractor: agricultural vehicles are a common sight on the two-lane roads between villages, and so are acquaintances.
A year and a half ago, Bálint and Karolina moved from a nearby town to Aparhant - close to Bálint’s family and the farm. “I would be stupid to throw this away,” he says of their life there.
Unlike his grandfather and farmers of his generation, Bálint is not interested in acquiring more land but wants to maximise his fields’ capacity to produce more and for longer. He practises regenerative agriculture, which involves rotating crops to fertilise the land naturally.
Bálint first became interested in this style of farming as a teenager after watching videos online. In his early 20s, he started researching regenerative agriculture and decided to pursue it, convinced it would make the farm more prosperous.
Regenerative agriculture protects biodiversity and water resources, reduces the need for tilling and monitoring the fields, and ultimately should enhance a farm's productivity in terms of quality and output.
But it requires resources, time and energy at the start. To help optimise his work, Bálint also invested in machinery equipped with radars, GPS and other gadgets. His two most expensive machines - both of them tractors - cost about 60 million forints ($163,294) each. “Which is not the top of the top,” he explains, but they can do “everything”. These business investments will be worthwhile in the long term, he believes.
Bálint gets out of the car to inspect his fields, and notes that the grapes are almost ready for harvest. So are the sunflowers, which have lost their yellow petals. To demonstrate, he takes a bloom, and squeezes it. Almost all the seeds easily fall out. Soon, it will be time to plant the rapeseed.
Bálint practises regenerative agriculture because he wants the land to feed future generations. “I want this field to serve my grandchildren too,” he says with a shy smile.
This form of farming sometimes goes against what his elders knew. Farmers generally have to use fertiliser and insecticide. Bálint only uses only what is necessary to maintain a certain produce standard in order to safeguard the soil. Older farmers, he says, would prefer to add more of these chemicals to get better results - even if it harms the land. Bálint admits, grinning, that difference in approaches often results in heated arguments between him and his grandfather at weekly Sunday family lunches. Especially in less profitable times.
Little impact from Ukrainian grain ban
The family farm covers more than 200 hectares (500 acres) of land: about 150 hectares of wheat, corn, sunflower and rapeseed, 30 hectares of grapevines and 35 hectares of forest.
Despite the difference in size, the smaller vineyard is currently what keeps the family afloat due to the falling price of their other crops.
The problem is twofold, Bálint explains.
During the pandemic and the first months of the Ukraine war, there was more demand for his produce, as a result of panic buying. He and other farmers managed to sell their crop at a high price - which pushed the cost of what Bálint calls input up. This includes everything he needs for his land: fertiliser, the insecticide mandated by the state, electricity, petrol for the vehicles and seeds. In the meantime, the price he could sell his grains for fell due to cheaper Ukrainian products flooding the market after they stopped being transported via Black Sea ports. This year, the family’s grain sold for a third of last year's price, Bálint says.
In May 2023, the European Commission imposed a six-month ban on the import of four Ukrainian grains and oilseeds - wheat, maize, rapeseed and sunflower seeds - in Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania and Slovakia to protect domestic farmers. Although the ban expired on September 15, Poland, Hungary and Slovakia have imposed new restrictions on Ukrainian products. In Hungary, 24 banned items include the original four products and others such as honey and eggs.
But for Bálint, the ban hasn’t altered the fact that he can barely cover his farming costs. “It would be better if the state would guarantee a minimum buying price for our grain,” he says.
Given this uncertainty, he bought rapeseed for next year, which has more stable market prices but requires more work.
He is nevertheless optimistic - and determined to succeed. “My goal is to be able to feed my family even if the nearby shops go empty,” he says. “According to a local saying, you are a good farmer if you have one year’s worth on the fields, one year in the warehouses and one year in the bank.”
Between August 26 and September 26, as part of a collaborative project, Bálint Rudics tracked his expenses with reporter Lili Rutai.
Expenses over a month
Groceries: Homemade ketchup and flour
Bálint and his family grow their own fruit and vegetables and keep chickens and pigs. They have a 200-litre fridge, he shares proudly, where they store meat year-round. On top of this, the cellar is full of fruits and vegetables, both preserved and fresh, homemade jam, pickles and sauces. “We don’t even need to buy ketchup,” he adds, referring to the homemade version they made this year.
His family recently started getting their grain milled for flour, and producing cooking oil from rapeseed.
This self-sufficiency means they have been less affected by inflation, with consumer prices in Hungary rising at the highest pace in the EU since November 2022, peaking at 26 percent in January 2023, according to data from Eurostat.
Once a month, they buy what they can’t grow, produce or trade with other farmers from the supermarket, items such as canned and baby food. They keep this spending to a minimum, and forgo some items like new clothing. “We don’t buy anything unnecessary,” Bálint says.
September 2022: 130,000 forints ($354) for a monthly supermarket shop*
September 2023: 150,000 forints ($408)
Children: Education comes first
Money spent on his children and their education is money well spent in Bálint’s opinion. Despite his love for his work, not going to university is one of his regrets. He wants to make sure the children get a good education before hopefully taking over the land, he says.
Tamara, Bálint’s stepdaughter, recently left home for university and immediately set about looking for part-time work to pay her rent. “She’s a very diligent person,” Bálint reflects. Her university fee is covered by the state. For part of her rent and other essentials, Bálint gives her 60,000 forints ($163) per month.
He gives Sólyom, Tamara's younger brother who still lives with the family, 20,000 forints ($54) a month in pocket money, enough to pay for snacks and commuting to school, but for any other expenses like festival tickets, he needs to earn an income by working on neighbouring farms, Bálint explains.
Vitamins, clothing and other essentials for Bóbita, Bálint and Karolina’s one-year-old, cost 55,000 forints ($150) per month.
September 2022: 50,000 forints ($136) for pocket money and baby expenses*
September 2023: 135,000 forints ($367)
Household bills: A new house, higher costs
Bálint and Karolina bought a house when they moved to Aparhant. Moving from an apartment to a spacious five-bedroom home saw their bills - which cover phone, internet, water, electricity, gas and insurance - go up significantly.
They also need to spend money on the renovations. Bálint prefers to do the work himself. His plans involve building a shed for the animals, including the cows they intend to buy in the calmer winter months.
He also wants to replace all the windows to better insulate the house and lower the heating bill. Replacing one of the windows at the front of the house alone will cost one million forints ($2,722). Replacing them all, he estimates, will take a few years.
September 2022: 60,000 forints ($163) for the month’s bills*
September 2023: 100,000 forints ($272)
Entertainment and internet: Agriculture and current events
Bálint likes to stay informed about his field and current affairs and sees himself as someone with plenty of opinions. “The best is when I get into an argument with myself when I’m working alone on the field,” he says, laughing.
During the day, he carries around portable wifi, and uses his phone to upload produce information onto a cloud to streamline his work. After weighing a box of freshly harvested grapes, he enters some details and uploads a photo.
He spends his evenings on the internet, researching sustainable agriculture and new techniques to improve his land. A current topic he is interested in is genetic modification, the DNA alternation of organisms, potentially that of crops - although both Hungarian laws and his grandfather’s views would prevent him from pursuing it for now, he says.
He doesn’t watch television, he says proudly, but subscribes to a few agriculture magazines, YouTube Premium to watch news channels, and HBO and Netflix for entertainment. He has seen a small price increase in the past year for Apple iCloud, where he stores farming information, and in YouTube fees.
September 2022: 13,000 forints ($35) on monthly subscriptions
September 2023: 15,000 forints ($41)
Medical bills: laser eye surgery
After Karolina contracted an eye infection earlier this year, she stopped wearing contact lenses and instead only wore glasses - something she finds impractical especially with an infant who flips them off constantly, Bálint explains. After consulting with a specialist, the couple decided to dip into their savings for laser eye surgery, which was not state-funded.
Bálint says they otherwise rarely need to spend on general healthcare, which is covered by the state.
To accompany his wife to the clinic, Bálint took a rare day off.
September 2022: 0 forints
September 2023: 330,000 forints ($898) for the surgery
*September 2022 price estimates were provided by Bálint.
Six quick questions for Bálint
1. What's one thing you had to forgo this month? A new phone. I have to charge this iPhone four times a day, and it’s very annoying, but [a new phone] is not among my top priorities.
2. What’s the hardest financial decision you had to make this month? Selling this year’s grain. In June, I decided not to sell it for 7,500 forints ($20) per tonne, hoping the price would go up to the previous years, at 15,000 forints ($41). It didn’t. So eventually we decided to sell for 6,200 forints ($17), which barely covers my own wage. It was a difficult decision, but we needed to get rid of it [for income].
3. Which is the most worthwhile expense from this month? Buying the input for next year’s crop - the fertiliser, the rapeseed, everything I need for producing. I paid 250,000 forints ($680) per hectare, roughly 10 percent more than last year.
4. When finances get tough - what advice do you have? To only spend money on necessary things. I use my family’s 18-year-old vehicle - it’s old, but it takes me from one point to the other. Instead of buying a new one, I would rather invest in a new tractor.
5. What’s your biggest money worry? I worry about getting paid by the buyers. I can only rest easy when someone purchases the produce, pays for it, and the money arrives in my account. But basically, the entirety of the growing process is stressful: you take most of your profit, and put it into the fields, where it stays for eight to nine months, at the mercy of the weather. Still, you can’t stress too much about this, unless you want to be medicated your entire life.
6. What’s the saving hack you are proudest of? Relying more on ourselves and less on the rest of the world. In the future, those who can produce the majority of their needs and aren’t reliant on anyone will survive and thrive.
Read more stories from the series: What's your money worth?