Hungary farmers turn to spa for rejuvenation ... of dry land

Oszkár Nagyapáti climbed to the bottom of a sandy pit on his land on the Great Hungarian Plain and dug into the soil with his hand, looking for a sign of groundwater that in recent years has been in accelerating retreat.

- JUSTIN SPIKE

DENES ERDOS Associated Press A FARMER in Kiskunmajsa, a town in an agricultural plain that has become increasingly parched.

"It's much worse, and it's getting worse year after year," he said as cloudy liquid slowly seeped into the hole. "Where did so much water go? It's unbelievable." Nagyapáti has watched with distress as the region in southern Hungary, once an important site for agriculture, has become increasingly parched and dry. Where a variety of crops and grasses once filled the fields, today there are wide cracks in the soil and growing sand dunes more reminiscent of the Sahara Desert than Central Europe.

The region, known as the Homokhátság, has been described by some studies as semiarid - a distinction more common in parts of Africa, the American Southwest or Australian Outback and is characterized by very little rain, dried-out wells and a water table plunging ever deeper underground.

In a 2017 paper in European Countryside, a scientific journal, researchers cited "the combined effect of climatic changes, improper land use and inappropriate environmental management" as causes for the Homokhátság's aridification, a phenomenon the paper called unique in this part of the continent.

Fields that in previous centuries would be regularly flooded by the Danube and Tisza rivers have, through a combination of climate-change-related droughts and poor water retention practices, become nearly unsuitable for crops and wildlife.

Volunteer 'water guardians'