Hungarian farm scheme shows no lasting cuts in fertiliser use

A large study of Hungarian farms has found that participation in the country’s agri-environment-climate scheme (AECS) was not followed by broad or persistent reductions in fertiliser use. The research, published in Environmental Sciences Europe, analysed a panel of 957 farms between 2014 and 2020, comparing changes around the moments farms entered and left the scheme. Its central conclusion is cautious: the incentive programme, designed to encourage farming practices that protect natural resources while sustaining agricultural production, did not produce statistically significant average effects on total fertiliser, nitrogen or phosphorus use after entry.

The study’s design was explicitly dynamic. Rather than simply comparing participating and non-participating farms at a single point in time, the researchers examined changes around entry into and exit from the scheme, and then tested how robust their findings were. Entry into the programme was not followed by broad or lasting declines in the main fertiliser categories. One exception appeared: potassium use declined in the first year after a farm joined the scheme, but this effect was not sustained in later periods. In other words, the only detectable shift faded rather than consolidating into a durable change in nutrient management.

Exit from the scheme told a similar story of null results, though with an important caveat. Estimates for farms leaving the programme were small and statistically insignificant. However, the authors note that exits were heavily concentrated in a single year, 2015, which means those estimates should be interpreted cautiously. A first-entry analysis likewise found no statistically significant average effects at the 5% level, and the conclusions remained stable after the researchers applied propensity-score methods and weight trimming, standard robustness checks designed to ensure the results are not artefacts of how comparison groups were constructed.

Land productivity showed no detectable response either. Participation in the AECS was not associated with statistically significant changes in how much output the farms produced per unit of land. Taken together, the findings suggest that, at least over the short term covered by the study window, the scheme did not measurably steer fertiliser behaviour or productivity outcomes across the participating farms, despite its intention to reconcile environmental protection with continued agricultural production.

The authors are careful to spell out what these null results do and do not mean. The absence of detected reductions in fertiliser use does not imply an absence of environmental benefits. Scheme commitments and environmental outcomes such as biodiversity, soil quality and nutrient losses were not directly observed in the study, so the analysis cannot speak to whether those broader goals were being met through other channels. The study notes that scheme commitments and outcomes such as biodiversity, soil quality and nutrient losses were not directly observed, so fertiliser use alone does not capture all aspects of the scheme's aims.

The study also illustrates the value of dynamic causal evidence in evaluating agri-environmental policy. The robustness checks, including trimming of propensity scores and weights, reinforce the stability of the central finding: no broad, persistent short-term effect on fertiliser use, with the transient first-year decline in potassium use standing as the sole statistically notable movement.

If incentive schemes are to deliver measurable changes in nutrient management, the Hungarian experience between 2014 and 2020 suggests that participation alone was not sufficient to shift fertiliser behaviour in a lasting way. Whether longer horizons, different scheme designs, or direct measurement of environmental outcomes would reveal effects that fertiliser records cannot see remains an open question that this study, by its own stated limitations, does not answer.

Subject of Research: The effect of Hungary's agri-environment-climate scheme on fertiliser use and land productivity on farms

Article Title: Incentivising sustainable fertiliser management: dynamic causal evidence from Hungarian farms

Article References: Fertő, I., & Bojnec, Š. (2026). Incentivising sustainable fertiliser management: dynamic causal evidence from Hungarian farms. Environmental Sciences Europe. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12302-026-01542-1

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1186/s12302-026-01542-1

Keywords: fertiliser use, agri-environment-climate schemes, Hungarian farms, panel data, causal inference, nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, land productivity, agricultural policy, Environmental Sciences Europe, Incentivising