MP for the ODS Petr Bendl was once, among other things, the minister of agriculture. And even though it’s been many years since then, he has largely stuck to farming. Not only is he the vice-chair of the Committee on Agriculture in the Chamber of Deputies, but he’s been dabbling in the field himself in practice.
In February you offered comments to several media outlets about the farmers’ protests. How do you feel about these in hindsight, what came of them?
I considered the first protest organized by Bohumír Dufek and Zdeněk Jandejsek to be more of a protest against the government and an expression of discontent with the state’s policies in general. I believe that the discontent and issues of farmers provided a channel for all of those who mainly have an issue with the Czech Republic’s support of Ukraine. The issues in agriculture essentially weren’t as important for the organizers of the first protest. I understood the second protest, organized by the Agrarian Chamber, far better, and saw it as an effort to draw attention to how serious the situation in agriculture has become.
Where should we look for the causes?
The current situation in agriculture has its roots all the way back in the previous regime when entrepreneurship was rooted out and a new agricultural structure that is completely different from other EU countries was established, and it all came to a head in 2014. It was impacted by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine two years ago. The subsequent speculations in the agricultural commodity market followed by an extreme growth in the price per tonne of wheat from four thousand crowns to almost double that, in conjunction with the Green Deal, a great deal of bureaucracy, the reduction of EU agricultural funding, and the strengthening of the Czech crown had an impact on the imbalance that ended up resulting in protests.
Much like in other departments, an easy solution probably doesn’t exist here either, does it?
If we are to provide agriculture with financial aid, it mustn’t be at the expense of the national debt, but rather at the expense of the administrative burden. It’s untenable to keep endlessly piling on national debt – the state pays ninety billion in interest alone every year, which is on the verge of becoming unmanageable. What we have to do something about, then, is lowering the massive amount of bureaucracy. To give you just one example – when I was the minister of agriculture twelve years ago, the criteria for obtaining subsidies from the rural development program were a seventy-page document, which was too long even back then. Today, that same documentation is almost one hundred and sixty pages! Figuring out all the terms and conditions is almost impossible even for companies specialized in project management and processing.
The Union is often blamed for the increase in bureaucracy...
Yes, many things are blamed on the European Union, but once you start getting into the details, you find out that the Union often doesn’t require certain things from us at all, and if it does require them, it certainly doesn’t insist on them being solved in the difficult bureaucratic ways we end up going with. I’m convinced that the amount of bureaucracy, not only in agriculture, is largely of our own making.
Are we trying to outpope the Pope then?
We are often trying to out-Europe the EU. We are incapable of distinguishing what the EU actually wants from us and what we want ourselves, for various reasons. The Chamber of Deputies discusses laws, but not the implementing provisions thereof. The decrees and government directives regulating the practical implementation of legislation include a great deal of bureaucratic nonsense. The Antibureaucracy Committee we established back in the day is an advisory body of the Ministry of Agriculture set up by the minister, where Ministry representatives, MPs, and senators meet, but important non-governmental organizations are also represented. It collects and deals with individual propositions, summarizes them, and then demands explanations from the relevant offices as to why this or that provision was written into the legislation. We’ve been trying to utilize it more to make the state apparatus leaner and therefore not only lighten the farmers’ load but also save taxpayer money.
Let’s pivot to the topic of animal husbandry and the positive list, or rather the petition, you stand behind.
The general public might not see it that way, but when it comes to husbandry, Czechia is a global power. No other country in the world has so many citizens who are this devoted to caring for animals. It is thanks to husbandry, be it private breeders or state institutions, that many animal species have been successfully saved. The positive list outlines every animal that isn’t allowed to be bred, and actually thoroughly contradicts the principles of husbandry. I don’t just represent a political opinion, but an opinion built on the arguments of professionals who have been dealing with this topic all their lives. Hindering the development of husbandry is not the way, we must instead create suitable conditions for breeders to perform at a high professional level.
You breed horses yourself – when did you first start farming? Was it before you became minister of agriculture?
I have sixty hectares of land, and from a European point of view, I’m a major farmer. From the Czech Republic’s point of view, however, I’m just a “mini” farmer. [laughs] And when did I get started? It was back when I was a regional president. I bought my first horse then. I discovered that being in the saddle and taking care of horses helps ease my stress and clear my head. You see, when you’re with the animal, you concentrate only on the work you’re doing with it, and you must push everything else away at that moment. Over time, I got more and more horses, up until the point when I found out that I was severely unhappy with having them stabled some fifty, sixty kilometers away. I looked for a solution, which came about eleven years ago in the form of the farm that I tend to this day.
But you don’t deal in food production?
I don’t, but I do have to take care of hayfields – in correct agricultural terms the permanent undergrowth – and however easy it may look from the outside looking in, it’s certainly anything but. If you want high-quality hay, you have to take care of these fields, it’s not all just about showing up, mowing it down, and drying it out. Not only do you have to work with the surrounding growth that reduces the size of the field, but also often battle with voles and other vermin that destroy your herbs and turn your field into something of a grass monoculture. But you need your hay to contain as many different types of grasses as possible, you have to plow the field once a year, reset it. The entire management process around pastures isn’t easy either. Once again, you need a multispecies grassland, which has a positive impact on a horse’s health and mentality. These are all things that have changed a great deal in the last decade. The trend today isn’t to lock up horses in stalls, but to have them roaming outside 24/7. You're essentially looking for a way to provide the horse with a healthy way of life.
Aside from politics and farming, you also dabble in folk music and amateur theater. How do you manage it all?
The guitar and folk music have, as opposed to theater, been my constant companions pretty much since childhood. I tried out amateur theater about fifteen years ago and stuck with it. All of it is essentially a way for me to relax. All of these different worlds – music, horses, theater – complete one another and help me unwind. With farming, music, and theater I get some mental rest from the Chamber, while the negotiations in the Chamber are a time when I gather my physical strength for the farm work.
You’ve been in politics for thirty years. Do you think that the environment has changed in any way?
No matter if the year is 1994, 2004, or 2014, you always feel like the current political culture is a catastrophe. Ultimately though, after each decade was through, it became apparent that things hadn’t been as bad as they were ten years prior. I imagine that looking back in 2034, today’s political landscape will be judged more kindly than it is today, even though we might perceive it differently. But I’m glad that it’s the youth’s time to shine, and there are a lot of capable young politicians around with a bright future ahead of them. We political dinosaurs can be useful with our experience; we have, after all, been through some stuff. I think that this symbiosis between youth and experience is good. A misalignment to one side or the other could lead to pointless mistakes.
BUREAUCRACY
When it comes to bureaucracy, which he has to deal with often as a private farmer and breeder, Petr Bendl is able to recount many specific stories. “As a small, ecological farmer, even focused mainly on breeding horses and not producing food, I see how outrageous all this paperwork is around the farm,” he says. “I personally experience situations when several representatives from different state institutions come to check on the very same thing, which is not only time-consuming but also unnecessarily expensive for the state.”
CV BOX
Petr Bendl (born January 24, 1966, in Kladno) is an MP for the ODS, former minister of agriculture and transport, and former president of the Central Bohemian Region.
He graduated from the College of Mechanical and Textile Engineering in Liberec. Between 1990 and 1994, he worked in the public sector in Kladno. This is where he became the mayor in 1994, a position he held until 1998.
He succeeded in the 1998 parliamentary election. Two years later he became the president of the Central Bohemian Region and resigned his seat in the Parliament for that reason. He defended the post of regional president in 2004.
Between 2002 and 2010, he was the vice-chair of the ODS. In January 2009, he became the minister of transportation. Following the 2010 election, he took up the mantle of an MP once more. In October 2011, he was appointed the minister of agriculture. He found success once more in the 2013 parliamentary election.
As a songwriter, he published two folk music CDs, and was asked to collaborate with the likes of Roman Horký and Milan Dufek. He dabbles in amateur theater, he’s a member of the Všenory theater company.
He lives in the village of Velká Dobrá in the Kladno region. He is divorced and has four children.
reklama
