From the 2026 budget audit
Agricultural research: 1.5 billion Ft held flat, industry to co-fund.
1.5 billion Ft in agricultural research support frozen at the 2026 level — declining gradually in real value as industry co-funding and competitive partnerships grow.
Roughly 387 Ft per taxpayer per year — 1,548 million Ft total — frozen in nominal terms while industry co-funding is invited to carry the marginal cost.
What you see — and what you don't
The seen: agricultural research institutes receiving state funding for research whose results benefit the producers who use them. The unseen: the general taxpayer co-funding applied research whose productivity gains are captured privately by the firms and producers that apply it — research that comparable markets fund through industry levies and competitive grants.
Objection
"Basic agricultural research is a public good — private firms will not fund it because they cannot exclude others from the results."
Answer
Much applied agricultural research is capturable by the producers who use the results — and is privately funded through industry levies in comparable markets. The freeze applies real-terms discipline without removing the function. Genuinely non-capturable research belongs in competitive research-council grants, not a standing ministerial appropriation.
Share if you think research whose results are captured by industry should be co-funded by industry.
The analyst's verdict
Agricultural research support
Rationale
Support for agricultural research. Research-priority setting is an activity where the state cannot read, from outside the research process, which lines of inquiry are genuinely the most valuable — the relevant knowledge is dispersed among researchers, firms, and producers, and is not aggregable by a central allocator. Much applied agricultural research is also directly captured by the firms and producers that use the results, and is funded privately on that basis elsewhere. The line is not, however, a concentrated rent of the kind the priority-support line is, and abrupt removal would disrupt research programmes mid-stream. Nominal freeze applies gradual real-terms discipline while inviting a rising share of industry and research-partnership co-funding.
Transition mechanism
Hold the nominal allocation; encourage industry co-funding and competitive research-partnership financing.
Affected groups
Agricultural research institutes; the producers who use the research; no immediate change.
Free Society Institute
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