Episode 2: The Land Grab Chronicles
Fields of Power
Episode 2 of Fields of Power moves from the aisles of a Hungarian supermarket into the hidden machinery of a political-economic system where land, food, and power are tightly intertwined. Péter and Ian begin by tracing the products of powerful political-economic elites – Hungary’s oligarchs – whose companies dominate everything from dairy to wine. But the question they pursue is bigger: how did land become the key to their power, and why does it matter for Hungary’s future? Episode 2: The Land Grab Chronicles Episode 2 shows how oligarchs and their allies used...
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Episode 3: Fear and Loathing in Hungary
Fields of Power
In Episode 3 of Fields of Power, we head out onto Hungary’s great plains in search of people living through the country’s land battles. What we find is a landscape marked not just by farmers without land, but by fear. Episode 3: Fear and Loathing in Hungary We meet István, a shepherd in his seventies whose life was upended when his grazing land was handed to a politically connected newcomer – setting off a chain of intimidation and violence that still haunts him. His story leads us to others: the farmers of Kishantos, like Ferenc and Éva, who faced threats, assaults, and the...
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Episode 1: Of Farms & Fortune
Fields of Power
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. Episode 1: Farms & Fortune 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...
info_outlineWhat 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.
Episode 1: Farms & Fortune
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?