Deputy State Secretary Katalin Tóth from the Ministry of Agriculture welcomed talented students from Transylvania and Vojvodina who will be spending the next ten days becoming acquainted with the activities of the Ministry and its background institutions, and with the Hungarian agricultural administration system within the framework of the trainee course organised by the Ministry for the second time this year.

In her welcoming speech, Deputy State Secretary Tóth stressed that the Hungarian Government does not differentiate between Hungarians living in Hungary and those who live in cross-border areas and will continue to do everything possible, in this case via the trainee programme, to provide assistance to all of our compatriots who live within the nation’s borders. Hungary must be a central organisational element in the forging of Hungarian-Hungarian ties, she emphasised.

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An especially important role must be shouldered by young cross-border professionals and entrepreneurs, because it is only through their intellectual guidance, professional involvement and continued presence in their homeland that the Hungarian community can be held together and a stronger national identity achieved. As the trustees of the future, their task and responsibility is huge since they must capitalise on and put into practise the high-level theoretical knowledge they have acquired back at home.

She said that the relationships forged during the course of studies and work were especially important since they could be a determining factor throughout the course of the students’ lives, and she expressed her hope that as many professional friendships and relationships as possible would develop during the course of the next week-and-a-half. The majority of the Hungarian peoples in the Carpathian Basin live in rural areas and their continued survival, especially in cross-border regions, greatly depends on the state of towns and villages, the landscape and the countryside, including the state of agriculture.

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In his speech, Head of Department for Carpathian Basin Relations Zsolt Belánszky-Demkó stressed that throughout the course of history Hungarian society and the Hungarian nation has always been able to renew itself through the strength of rural areas. It is this environment that continues to preserve the traditions, customs and natural treasures that represent the values of the Hungarian peoples. For us to survive within the Carpathian Basin, we must think along the lines of a unified nation and must also provide assistance to Hungarians living beyond our borders from an economic perspective.

During the ten-day trainee course, the Hungarian students from Transylvania and Vojvodina will gain an insight into the everyday operations of the agricultural administration and will become acquainted with the activities of the Ministry of Agriculture and the scientific programmes run by the Corvinus University of Budapest’s Faculty of Horticultural Sciences. They will visit the University’s training farm, the National Botanical Gardens, the headquarters of the Research Institute for Fruit Growing, the Plant Diversity Centre, a herb farm and the István Soós School of Viticulture and Winemaking, thereby getting a taste of Hungarian practical training, in addition to which they will visit the Museum of Agriculture.

(Ministry of Agriculture)