The total area of forests in the Czech Republic has been constantly expanding and is now much larger than before 1989, the daily Lidove noviny (LN) reported. Since 1966 the forest area has increased by 50,000 hectares. Last year it amounted to 2,645 million hectares.
Among the reasons for such an expansion is the system of subsidies for planting trees. Farming no longer pays, so owners of agricultural land to plant find it more advantageous to plant forests.
"The European Union supports not-agricultural methods of landscape cultivation, and a forest is ideal in this respect," said Hugo Roldan from the Agriculture Ministry.
Before the Czech Republic joined the EU in May 2004, the country supported afforestation from its own resources. Now EU finances are also earmarked for this purpose.
The environmental impact of forests is taken into consideration much more now than in the past. Consequently, higher subsidies are allocated to more resistant deciduous and mixed forests, which withdraw water for a longer period, than to coniferous forests.
A forest owner will receive CZK 72,000 crowns per hectare in subsidies for a coniferous forest and CZK 92,000 per hectare for a mixed or deciduous forest. Moreover, forest owners can count on state subsidies for forest maintenance until the trees can be lumbered.
"Today it is more advantageous for a number of farmers to plant a forest than to grow agricultural crops which they can have problems selling," Roldan said.
Some farmers warn that the EU support for afforestation could cause a decline in agricultural land which would threaten the country's self-sufficiency in agricultural production.
"If a forest grows up somewhere it can hardly be turned back into a meadow or fields," said Hana Hricova, head of the South Bohemian Regional Agricultural Chamber.
The Agriculture Ministry argues that the share of agricultural land in the Czech Republic is still some 20 percent higher than the EU average.