The Agriculture and Regional Development Ministry plans to increase the cost of renting its irrigation systems by 200 times, meaning that the charge will skyrocket from 3 euro cents to €6 per hectare of irrigated land per year, according to the Hospodárske Noviny daily.
This way it hopes to acquire extra income for the state-run company Water Improvement, which is in charge of the irrigation systems rented out to farmers. "The company can't ensure that the equipment is managed and maintained to the required extent under present conditions”, stated the ministry. Farmers who rent irrigation systems have challenged this claim, arguing that the rental system doesn't cost the state-run company anything, as all expenditures associated with managing and maintaining the irrigation system is born by farmers themselves. "I'll keep two or three systems, and let the state firm take care of the rest. I won't plant potatoes on 500 hectares but only on 300, which will still be enough for me”, said Jan Bitter, director of the agricultural company Slov-Mart from Katlovce (Trnava region). Farmers add that running the systems entails not only investments in the equipment but also in protecting it, as irrigation systems often fall prey to vandals. For example a company called Agromacaj based in Kráľová pri Senci (Bratislava region) had to invest as much as €250,000 of its own money on repairing the system that it was renting from the state.
