Part I — Situation overview

Szabolcs Bóna, the minister responsible for agriculture and the food economy — the designation of the portfolio according to the reference in Telex’s report of 30 July 2026 — announced that the National Hail Suppression System (JÉGER) will not be started up in those counties where the majority of farmers asked for this. The basis of the decision is a survey by the National Chamber of Agriculture (NAK), which according to the ministerial statement was carried out on the methodology of the Institute of Agricultural Economics, by questioning five thousand farmers: 66.1 per cent of respondents took a position in favour of suspension, 24.5 per cent in favour of maintaining the system. The territorial difference is significant — in Transdanubia the bulk of farmers trust the system, and in Vas county 65.5 per cent voted in favour of continued operation. Even where the system remains, the rules are being tightened: instead of the previous 50–60 per cent chance of hail, intervention will take place above 80 per cent. The minister emphasised that the connection between the system and the drought is not a question that can be settled by a vote, and that an independent scientific panel will therefore examine its operation.

The precedent is a campaign of social pressure: the owner of an agricultural business launched a petition against JÉGER with the claim that the system causes the lack of precipitation; according to the ministerial statement the petition was signed by some twelve thousand people, according to the press report by fourteen thousand, and a parliamentary party also lined up behind the initiative. The minister himself remarked that anyone could sign the petition, not only agricultural producers — this is why he considered the representative survey and the professional review necessary. The position of the scientific side is nevertheless unambiguous: according to the specialist compilation dealing with the topic, one can argue about the hail-suppression system, but it is not what lies behind the drought — among the causes of the dryness are emissions continuing since the industrial era and the water-management practice of recent decades.

All this happened in a week when the drought situation is in itself extraordinary. The minister responsible for the living environment — according to 24.hu’s designation, László Gajdos — reported after consultation with the heads of the state water-utility companies that the systems are struggling to bear the increased consumption demand, and that because of the low water level of the Danube the quantity of water that can be abstracted is decreasing; he asked people to forgo filling pools and washing cars, and signalled: “we shall not shy away even from steps that seem drastic”. The government had earlier called the drought situation a danger to national strategy, ordered extraordinary alert status and set up a water-management working group; on 30 July water restrictions came into force in one district of Szentendre. On agricultural damage, agricultural economists speaking in the press put it that part of the damage can no longer be repaired, and that this may be one of the worst years in the recent past of Hungarian agriculture.

MIAK’s reading: the real stake of the JÉGER dispute is not the fate of the hail cannons but the basis on which we decide about operating an environmental public service of disputed effect. The ministerial solution — following the will of the local majority, in parallel with launching an independent professional examination — is an understandable political compromise, but it leaves two problems open. On the one hand it ties participation in a system with external effects to a county-level voting ratio, even though the effect of the intervention does not stop at the county boundary. On the other hand, in parallel with the suspension, the very basis of comparison that the scientific examination would need may disappear. According to MIAK the correct order is the reverse: first the data, then the decision.

Part II — Literature foundation

Three authors give a frame for interpreting the situation. Elinor Ostrom (American political scientist, the first woman to receive the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics) analyses in her work The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action the enduringly functioning cases of self-governance of commonly used resources — pastures, fishing grounds, irrigation systems — and identifies eight design principles, the first of which point precisely at the weak spots of the present dispute: clearly defined boundaries, rules adapted to local conditions, those affected being drawn into rule-making, and monitoring accountable to those affected. Daniel Kahneman (Israeli–American psychologist, Nobel laureate in economics, researcher of decision-making biases) explains in his book Thinking, Fast and Slow why this became a national dispute: human thinking automatically constructs a coherent causal story out of fragmentary data, and if two conspicuous phenomena — the operation of hail cannons and the dryness — coincide in time, the assumption of a cause-and-effect relationship is not an error but the default mode of operation. And the World Bank’s World Development Report 2015 points towards the policy answer: the obstacles to the adoption of technology and insurance by farmers are largely behavioural, and according to the evidence social learning — the experience of the neighbouring farmer — is often a more effective incentive than the size of the subsidy. The detailed treatment of the literature — author by author, with quotations — can be found in the 6.4 Literature in detail section.

Part III — MIAK’s concrete proposal

MIAK proposes three measurable measures which turn the JÉGER dispute from a question of mood into a question of measurement, and drought management from after-the-fact damage relief into risk reduction moved forward in time.

3.1 Publication of JÉGER’s impact data and fixing of the mandate of the professional examination (within 60 days)

MIAK proposes that simultaneously with the setting up of the independent scientific panel — and not waiting for its result — the full data series of the system’s operation to date should be published, broken down by county and by generator: when and where there was intervention, at what forecast chance of hail, with how much material use, and how the measured hail damage and the precipitation then developed in the intervention district and in the neighbouring districts. In parallel with this, the panel’s mandate must also be fixed publicly: exactly what it examines, what data it is given access to, by when it will be ready, and whether the report will be published in full. The MG2 agricultural data platform programme point represents precisely this approach: the agricultural-policy dispute can be led out of the space of mood if the data come before the position. MIAK also formulates an important methodological warning: the present suspension, differing county by county, unintentionally creates a natural experimental situation — in some counties the system operates, in others it does not — and it would be a pity to leave this possibility of comparison unused. For that, however, the measurement protocol must be fixed before the season, rather than the data being fitted to the conclusion afterwards.

3.2 A public drought-damage and soil-moisture map at plot or settlement level (within 12 months)

The second proposal concerns the measurement of drought damage. Today we know national and county aggregates about the damage, whereas the intervention — from irrigation development through damage relief to a change in the cropping pattern — is a plot-level decision. MIAK therefore proposes a public, regularly updated drought-damage and soil-moisture map which shows satellite vegetation data, soil-moisture measurements and the reported damage data on a single interface. The map makes three things possible: damage relief becomes targeted, the farmer also gets data for their own decision, and it becomes verifiable after the fact whether the support reached the places where the damage occurred. This is the shared intersection of the MG1 precision agriculture programme and the MG2 data platform, and at the same time the adaptation side of K1 measurable climate targets. The aspect of territorial inequality weighs particularly heavily here: in agriculture-dependent micro-regions a lost season is not a single bad year but a loss of income with effects over several years, and drought exposure must therefore also enter among the data of the TE1 micro-regional development index.

3.3 Risk reduction moved forward in time instead of damage relief, from the 2027 support year

The third proposal is the most costly and the most important. The centre of gravity of Hungarian drought management lies today on after-the-fact damage relief, even though part of the damage that occurs — as the present season also shows — is irreversible: the lost harvest cannot be brought back with money, only the loss can be partly made up. MIAK therefore proposes shifting the centre of gravity of the support system in three directions. First: agro-technology improving the water-retention capacity of the soil (soil cover, reduced disturbance, replacement of organic matter, landscape-level water retention) should be one of the conditions of area-based support rather than a separate call for applications — a rule appearing as a condition reaches an order of magnitude more farmers than a call for applications does. Second: radical simplification of irrigation permitting, with a water-resource limit — that is, a rapid, predictable procedure, but with a pre-fixed upper limit on the quantity that can be abstracted at catchment level, so that the simplification does not take place at the expense of the water base. Third: broadening risk sharing — making weather index-based insurance products available and reshaping the damage-relief fund so that a farmer investing in prevention obtains cover on more favourable terms. According to the behavioural evidence, availability in itself is not enough: dissemination built on social learning — demonstration farms, farmer mentors — is the most cost-effective incentive (see 6.4.3).

The three proposals are bound together by a single principle: uncertainty must be measured, not voted on. A responsible decision can be taken about an intervention of disputed effect if we know its effect; and one can prepare for a predictably recurring risk if the money moves before the event, not after it. An important remark on the decision structure: JÉGER is operated by a public-law body, the National Chamber of Agriculture, which the minister — correctly — invited rather than instructed. This structure is not in itself a fault: as a body performing a public task, the public-law body is responsible for the accessibility of its data of public interest. Practice shows, however, that a request for data of public interest is a slow route conducted case by case — MIAK therefore proposes that the system’s operating data should be accessible not on request but automatically, through regular publication, as befits public tasks operated from public money.

Part IV — Expected effects and risks

Dimension Expected effect Risk
Agriculture Public impact data lead the JÉGER dispute out of the space of mood, and the farmer’s decision is put on a factual basis If the suspension remains in place until after the data publication, the basis of comparison is lost, and next year the dispute starts up again without data
Environment and climate Water-retaining agro-technology as a condition of support reaches an order of magnitude more land than the logic of calls for applications does Tightening the system of conditions may place a disproportionate burden on small farms if it is not accompanied by training and a transitional period
Water management Simplification of irrigation permitting speeds up adaptation Without a water-resource limit the simplification would accelerate the exhaustion of the water base — the limit is not a supplement but a condition
Budget Risk reduction moved forward in time is cheaper in the long run than repeated damage relief In the years of transition the cost of the two systems is temporarily piled on top of each other
Territorial inequality Plot-level damage measurement makes support targeted in the most affected micro-regions Data-based targeting may disadvantage those who have no digital capacity for data provision

The main deliberative question stretches between local self-determination and external effect. Questioning the farmers is in itself a defensible, indeed necessary step — a central element of Ostrom’s analysis, too, is that the rules should be shaped by those affected. Common-pool resource governance is not, however, the same as majority voting: the theoretical frame requires clearly defined boundaries, a measured state and monitoring accountable to those affected. A participation decision tied to a county boundary does not satisfy these conditions, because the effect of the intervention — whatever it may be — does not take effect along administrative boundaries. The second sensitive point is the relationship between the scientific examination and the political decision. MIAK’s position is that suspension as a temporary measure tied to a review date is acceptable; what is not acceptable is postponing the review without a deadline and a public mandate — because temporary measures, experience shows, become permanent when nobody has fixed by when a decision must be taken again.

Part V — Measurability and summary

5.1 What is worth tracking? (proposed performance indicators)

According to MIAK the following performance indicators (KPIs, in English Key Performance Indicator) are worth tracking over 12–24 months:

  • The public availability of JÉGER’s impact data: publication of the intervention and damage-prevention data series broken down by county — proposed deadline 60 days, proposed target the full time series.
  • The closing of the scientific examination: a public mandate, a deadline and a report published in full — proposed target closure before the start of the 2027 hail-damage season.
  • The operation of the drought-damage map: public, at least at settlement level, if possible at plot level, published with monthly updating during the season — proposed deadline 12 months.
  • The share of land cultivated with water-retaining agro-technology: as a percentage of the total supported area — proposed target a measurable annual increase, with 2026 as the starting base.
  • The share of land insured against weather risk: the share of insured arable land and the share of damage-relief payments within total agricultural support — proposed target a shift in favour of prevention.

5.2 Summary

The key message: the JÉGER dispute is not about whether farmers believe in hail cannons, but about whether we have a basis of measurement on which to decide about a system of disputed effect operated from public money — and MIAK asks the decision-maker to publish the system’s data so far, to give the professional examination a public mandate and deadline, and to shift the centre of gravity of the public money allocated to drought from after-the-fact damage relief to risk reduction moved forward in time. And it asks the public not to look for the simple explanation at a time of dryness: even the worst drought does not become more manageable because we find a clearly visible culprit for it.

Two MIAK foundational values are in play on this topic. Data-drivenness, because this dispute shows in its pure form what happens in a space short of data: public opinion turns the coincidence of two conspicuous phenomena into a causal relationship, and the decision is born of the rank order of convictions rather than of measurement. And being ideology-free, because the question has become a party-political dispute, even though neither the physics of hail suppression nor the water-retention capacity of the soil depends on who governs. MIAK’s yardstick here is simple: the decision about the hail cannons will be a good one if a year later anyone can check whether it was correct — and what is missing for that today is the data, not the will.

Part VI — Justifications and further sources

6.1 The press framing by spectrum

The liberal-left and public-affairs band ran two separate frames in parallel. One was the decision chronicle: Telex’s economics section carried the facts of the announcement and the figures of the survey (“The JÉGER hail-prevention system is being shut down in those counties where farmers reject it”), with the participation ratios and the raising of the intervention threshold to 80 per cent. The other — and from a policy point of view this is the more valuable — was the scientific correction: Telex’s science section devoted a separate article to the point that “one can argue about the hail-suppression system, but it is not what lies behind the drought”, and named long-term emissions and water-management practice among the causes of the dryness. This duality maps precisely the structure of the problem: the decision was born in political space, whereas the question is a professional one.

24.hu gave the general crisis frame of the drought: it led with the quotation from the minister responsible for the living environment, “we shall not shy away even from steps that seem drastic”, and arranged the events into a single connected picture of crisis, from the requests concerning household water use to the capacity reduction at Paks. The same outlet carried the report on the state of the forests, which pointed at the most rarely discussed consequence — lasting damage to woody vegetation — and the agricultural economists’ assessment of irreparable damage. The economic band, through Portfolio, placed the quantifiable damage at the centre, carrying at once the analysis of irreversible damage and the point that existing, well-known agro-technical solutions are hardly applied — this is the only framing that approached from the side of the solution.

What appeared in none of the bands: that the suspension is itself a data question — that is, that the present practice, differing county by county, creates a possibility of comparison which without a measurement protocol we lose. The pro-government and conservative band did not bring the topic into focus on this day; there the climate and drought news ran from the direction of energy supply.

6.2 Facts and data

Data Value Source
The sample of the NAK survey approx. 5000 farmers questioned, on the methodology of the Institute of Agricultural Economics statement of the agriculture minister, 30 July 2026
The share of those supporting suspension 66.1% statement of the agriculture minister, 30 July 2026
The share of those supporting maintenance 24.5% statement of the agriculture minister, 30 July 2026
Territorial extreme value in Vas county 65.5% in favour of continued operation statement of the agriculture minister, 30 July 2026
The change in the intervention threshold raised from a 50–60% chance of hail to above 80% statement of the agriculture minister, 30 July 2026
The number of signatories of the petition 12–14 thousand (the ministerial statement and the press report differ); according to the minister not exclusively producers Telex, 30 July 2026
The operator of the system National Chamber of Agriculture (public-law body) Telex, 30 July 2026
Water restriction from 30 July 2026 in one district of Szentendre statement of Duna Menti Regionális Vízmű Zrt.
The classification of the drought situation danger to national strategy; extraordinary alert status, setting up of a water-management working group government statement, July 2026
The character of this year’s damage according to the expert assessment partly no longer repairable ATV, Portfolio, 30 July 2026

The most important connection in the table runs between the result of the survey and the legal status of the system’s operator. Two thirds of farmers supported suspension, but the system is operated by a public-law body as a public task — that is, the decision is not a simple question of ownership or membership but one of a public service whose effect also touches those who did not vote. This is the point at which the logic of majority voting and that of common-pool resource governance part company. The second connection is the raising of the threshold value: raising the intervention limit from 50–60 per cent to above 80 per cent is in itself a significant operational change whose effect must be measured separately — without this, next year’s evaluation will not be able to separate the effect of the suspension from that of the tightening.

6.3 Policy dimensions

  • Agriculture (programme points) — the public availability of JÉGER’s impact data and of drought damage is the subject of the agricultural data platform (programme point ID: MG2); plot-level damage measurement and water-retaining agro-technology is an application of the precision agriculture programme (programme point ID: MG1); the formation of the participation and irrigation rules falls under the scope of the community resource-management frame (programme point ID: MG5).
  • Environment and climate (programme points) — drought exposure as a measurable adaptation indicator fits into the system of measurable climate targets (programme point ID: K1); the territorial distribution of agricultural damage is a deliberative aspect of the just transition programme (programme point ID: K5).
  • Territorial inequality and rural policy (programme points) — the income exposure of agriculture-dependent micro-regions belongs within the data scope of the micro-regional development index (programme point ID: TE1); the public-service consequences of the lost season must be tracked on the yardstick of the rural public-service minimum (programme point ID: TE4).

6.4 Literature in detail

6.4.1 Elinor Ostrom: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action

Ostrom’s work starts from the question of why some communities are able to sustain a commonly used resource — a pasture, a fishing ground, an irrigation system — over centuries, while others exhaust it. The answer lies not in the form of ownership but in the institutional details: comparing the enduringly functioning cases, the author identifies eight “design principles”, and the first of these is the most important from the point of view of the present Hungarian decision:

“Clearly defined boundaries. Individuals or households who have rights to withdraw resource units from the common-pool resource must be clearly defined, as must the boundaries of the common-pool resource itself.”

The present JÉGER decision is uncertain precisely at this point: the boundary of participation is administrative (county-level), whereas the boundary of the intervention’s effect — whatever it may be — is meteorological, and the two do not coincide. Ostrom’s further principles are just as directly applicable: the adaptation of rules to local conditions, the participation of those affected in rule-making, and the requirement that the monitors observing the state of the resource should themselves be among those affected, or be accountable to them. The author also warns about multi-level, nested institutions: on the example of the Spanish irrigation communities she shows that a rule created at one level remains inoperable without the rules of the other levels. The Hungarian lesson: a catchment-level irrigation and intervention rulebook — the subject of MIAK’s MG5 programme point — promises more result than a yes-or-no decision taken separately county by county.

📖 Source: Elinor Ostrom: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action

6.4.2 Daniel Kahneman: Thinking, Fast and Slow

The central observation of Kahneman’s book is that fast, automatic thinking (in the author’s terminology, System 1) continuously constructs coherent causal stories out of fragmentary information, and does so so quickly that conscious deliberation receives a ready-made explanation. The author illustrates the phenomenon with a stock-market example in which the same event became, within half an hour, the explanation of two mutually opposed market movements:

“The headlines merely satisfy our need for coherence: we expect a significant event to have consequences, and consequences need causes to explain them.”

This mechanism explains the force of the JÉGER dispute. There is a conspicuous, visible, human-operated intervention — hail cannons, silver iodide, generators — and a serious, hard-to-bear phenomenon: the dryness. Thinking automatically links them, and the resulting story is the more convincing the fewer details we know. Kahneman’s other pertinent observation is that statistical thinking is difficult, because it requires weighing many factors at once — whereas causal thinking is effortless. The policy conclusion is therefore not that the farmers are mistaken: the fault lies not in their thinking but in the lack of data. If there is no public, verifiable measurement, then the most coherent story wins — and it is precisely for this reason that MIAK’s proposal is data publication rather than persuasion.

📖 Source: Daniel Kahneman: Thinking, Fast and Slow

6.4.3 World Bank: World Development Report 2015 — Mind, Society, and Behavior

The World Bank’s report treats the behavioural conditions of policy design, and across several chapters deals with the phenomenon that the Hungarian press described in the form “the solution exists, yet it is hardly used”. The report shows that agricultural advice is effective when it reaches producers not through an administrative channel but through fellow farmers: according to experiments in Uganda and Malawi, involving the neighbouring farmer substantially improved the adoption of new procedures. The same applies to insurance products: in a Chinese experiment farmers took out weather insurance at a far higher rate if an acquaintance of theirs had earlier taken part in an information session about the product — the size of this “network effect” was, according to the authors’ calculation, equivalent to a reduction of about 13 per cent in the insurance premium. The report also warns that interventions may trigger unforeseen side effects in social relations: if insurance is available only to those who own land, that may increase the wage risk of landless agricultural workers.

Three things follow from this for the Hungarian proposal. First: for the dissemination of water-retaining agro-technology, the demonstration farm and the farmer mentor are more effective instruments than raising the amount of support. Second: making weather index-based insurance available is in itself not enough — without trust and social learning, coverage remains low. Third: in designing the schemes, the situation of landless agricultural workers dependent on wage labour must be weighed separately, because the risk falls on them indirectly, through fluctuations in employment.

📖 Source: World Bank: World Development Report 2015 — Mind, Society, and Behavior

6.5 International comparison

European practice on the question of hail suppression is divided, and it is precisely this division that is the most important lesson. In several southern European wine regions and fruit-growing areas, ground-generator or aircraft-based systems have been operating for decades; elsewhere the emphasis is on passive defence — hail netting, plastic tunnels, insurance; the international literature on effectiveness is not unambiguous, and precisely for that reason in most places the systems are accompanied by regular, independent evaluation. In drought management, Spanish and Italian practice builds on irrigation communities: the water resource is distributed at catchment level, the communities themselves manage the quota, and the rules are shaped by those affected — this is the living realisation of Ostrom’s model. Israeli and Spanish practice also shows the technological side: measured, drip irrigation and the agricultural reuse of treated waste water. From the side of the EU’s common agricultural policy, the system of conditions relating to the state of the soil gives a frame for what MIAK proposes: the theoretical possibility of water-retaining farming practices set as a condition of support is already given today, and the question is the strictness of domestic implementation and the quality of the advice attached to it. The Hungarian lesson is therefore not the adoption of a foreign model but the order: measurement, catchment-level rule, then support — and not the reverse.

Agriculture

  • MG1 — Precision agriculture programme
  • MG2 — Agricultural data platform
  • MG4 — Digitalisation of small farmers
  • MG5 — Community resource-management frame

Environment and climate

  • K1 — Measurable climate targets
  • K5 — Just transition programme

Territorial inequality and rural policy

  • TE1 — Micro-regional development index
  • TE4 — Rural public-service minimum

Proposed new programme point: An intervention-evaluation obligation for environmental public services of disputed effect — for every environmental intervention of disputed effect operated from public money (hail suppression, artificial precipitation enhancement and the like), mandatory public data publication and periodic independent evaluation, with a pre-fixed measurement protocol — for the Agriculture and Environment and climate areas.

6.7 List of sources

Press sources (MIAK press monitor, 31 July 2026 — topic 4):

Knowledge-base references (books):

  • 📖 Elinor Ostrom: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action
  • 📖 Daniel Kahneman: Thinking, Fast and Slow
  • 📖 World Bank: World Development Report 2015 — Mind, Society, and Behavior

Note: the local file path of the book does NOT appear in the visible text of the blog — only the author and the title.

MIAK internal materials:

  • MIAK policy area: Agriculture (programme points; programme point ID: MG5)
  • MIAK policy area: Environment and climate (programme points; programme point ID: K1)
  • MIAK policy area: Territorial inequality and rural policy (programme points; programme point ID: TE1)
  • MIAK press monitor, 31 July 2026 — topic 4, score: 81/100

Additional public data sources:

  • Damage-assessment statements of the Institute of Agricultural Economics and the National Chamber of Agriculture
  • Groundwater-level and hydrological time series of the National Directorate of Water Management
  • Copernicus European Drought Observatory drought index
  • HungaroMet drought monitoring, Eurostat agricultural crop forecast

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