“Fields of Power” is a serial podcast that tells the story of how control over land in Hungary became a crucial terrain for consolidating Prime Minister Orbán’s regime’s authoritarian grip on power. At the heart of “Fields of Power” is a central question: how does land ownership shape democracy? Or even more urgently: how does the loss of land ownership by farmers help fuel the rise of illiberal, right-wing and authoritarian politics? Here is “Of Farms & Fortune”, the first in a four-part series created by Ian M. Cook, Péter József Bori and Noémi Gonda.
Episode 1: Of Farms & Fortune
What looks like a dispute over farmland turns out to be something much larger. Episode 1 of Fields of Power begins with the story of Kishantos, an organic farm south of Budapest and opens into a wider investigation of land grabbing, power, and the rise of authoritarian politics in Hungary.
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Fields of Power begins at Kishantos, a once-celebrated organic demonstration farm and folk school in rural Hungary. In this episode, we follow the story of Éva Ácsné, who spent decades building a model of ecological farming, education, and community, only to see the land seized and crops destroyed after a government land tender handed the fields to politically connected newcomers.
Through Éva’s experience, we open up a bigger story: how the privatisation of state-owned agricultural land in the 2010s helped consolidate authoritarian power around Hungary’s ruling elite. We hear how land – once imagined as the basis of sustainable livelihoods and local democracy – became a tool for wealth accumulation, patronage, and political control.
Alongside Éva’s testimony, investigative journalist Gabriella Horn helps us trace how Hungary’s farmland moved from state cooperatives to private hands, and how EU agricultural subsidies made land ownership itself extraordinarily profitable – even without farming it.
What happened in Kishantos is not just a local tragedy. It reveals how struggles over land use and ownership matter for democracy, and how democracy can literally erode from the ground up.
This episode sets the stage for the series’ central questions: What happens when control over the land shifts away from communities? And how does this loss help fuel the rise of illiberal, right-wing and authoritarian politics?
Transcript Episode 1 Fields of Power
Show notes
Fields of Power was researched and produced by Ian M. Cook, Péter Bori and Noémi Gonda. The research for this podcast was financed by the Swedish Research Council for Sustainable Development Formas under grant agreement numbers 2018-00442 and 2024-00448. The podcast has been narrated by Péter Bori and Ian M. Cook. Sound design and audio editing was Ian M. Cook. The music is Solar Fractal by Quarksstar and Xenas Kiss/ Medeas Kiss by MWIC. The executive producer of Fields of Power is Noémi Gonda.
Selected reading
Ágh, A., The Decline of Democracy in East-Central Europe. Problems of Post-Communism, 2016. 63(5-6): p. 277-287.
Ángyán, J., Állami földprivatizáció – intézményesített földrablás [ State-led land privatisation- institutionalised land grabbing]. 2015.
Antal, A., Authoritarian populism, environmentalism and exceptional governance in Hungary. Politologický časopis – Czech Journal of Political Science, 2021. 3: p. 209-228.
Bori, P.J. and N. Gonda, Shattering the Chains of Rural Repression, in Rural Europe Takes Action: No More Business As Usual, H. Lorenzen and O. Moore, Editors. 2022, Forum Synergies and Arc2020: Brussels p. 142-147.
Bori, P.J. and N. Gonda, Contradictory populist ecologies: Pro-peasant propaganda and land grabbing in rural Hungary. Political Geography, 2022. 95(2022): p. 1-3.
Bozóki, A. and D. Hegedüs, The rise of authoritarianism in the European Union: A hybrid regime in Hungary, in The Condition of Democracy. 2021, Routledge: London, UK. p. 143-165.
Czibere, I. and I. Kovách, State Populism in Rural Hungary. Rural Sociology, 2022. 87: p. 733-757 DOI: 10.1111/ruso.12407.
Fidrich, R., Hungary. The Return of the White Horse: Land Grabbing in Hungary, in Land concentration, land grabbing and people’s struggles in Europe, J.C. Franco and S.M. Borras Jr, Editors. 2013, Transnational Institute: Amsterdam, Netherlands. p. 128-147.
Gonda, N., Land grabbing and the making of an authoritarian populist regime in Hungary. The Journal of Peasant Studies, 2019. 46(3): p. 606-625.
Gonda, N. and P.J. Bori, Rural politics in undemocratic times: Exploring the emancipatory potential of small rural initiatives in authoritarian Hungary. Geoforum, 2023. 143: p. 1-13.
Gonda, N. and P.J. Bori, Energy justice without democracy? Energy transitions in the era of right-wing authoritarianism in Hungary. Energy Research & Social Science, 2025. 129.
Greenpeace. Fighting a government-assisted land grab with #peoplepower in Hungary, 2014.
Kay, S., Land grabbing and land concentration in Europe. A Research Brief. 2016, Transnational Institute: Amsterdam.
Krasznai Kovács, E., Surveillance and state-making through EU agricultural policy in Hungary. Geoforum, 2015. 64(Supplement C): p. 168-181.
van der Ploeg, J.D., J.C. Franco, and S.M. Borras, Land concentration and land grabbing in Europe: a preliminary analysis. Canadian Journal of Development Studies / Revue canadienne d’études du développement, 2015. 36(2): p. 147-162.
Look out for the next episode next Monday! Episode 2 will delve deeper into the complex web that ties together oligarchs: land deals, EU subsidies and the effect this has on sustainability, food security … and democracy.
Noémi Gonda is a researcher at the Department of Urban and Rural Development at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences. She holds a PhD from Central European University. She is currently doing research on justice and conflict resolution in resource management as well as on the linkages between natural resources depletion and authoritarian populist political regimes. Her empirical research field sites are in Nicaragua and Hungary. Previously to becoming a researcher, she worked in Nicaragua, Honduras and Guatemala with smallholder farmers, indigenous groups and international organisations. Noémi is particularly interested in exploring how radical social and environmental transformations towards justice and equity can emerge, and the role of scholar-activists in supporting the emergence of such transformations.
Ian M. Cook is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow at Dublin City University, a member of the Allegra Lab editorial collective, a volunteer at Budapest’s Open Learning Initiative (OLIve) and a freelance scholarly podcaster.
Péter J. Bori is a PhD candidate at the Department of Environmental Sciences and Policy, Central European University, working on climate change and environmental politics within authoritarian illiberal political contexts. He is a Europaeum Scholar, also conducting research on energy justice in Hungary within a project funded by the Swedish Research Council on sustainable development.
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