The Weed Field

Mihai Anghel, owner of Cerealcom Dolj, doesn’t talk to journalists very often, and when he does, he prefers to talk about the state of the agriculture instead of his businesses. For him, there is a long chain of causes that led to the decline of Romanian agriculture.

“Romania’s agriculture has the potential to feed 80 million inhabitants, but it supplies food only to 8 million,” explains Anghel.Romania’s production is 10% of what it could be, and figures have been sliding for the last five years. Estimates on the value of last year’s agricultural production point to a 20% decline against 2008, to 7.2 billion euros. This would mean agriculture only contributed 6% to the GDP of 2009, i.e. half as much as in 2004, compared with a 45% contribution of France’s agriculture to GDP.

BUSINESS Magazin identified a long list of factors that contribute to this situation. Anghel says one of the factors is the lack of a coherent strategy for agricultural development, which has led to only “around 3.5 million hectares of the 10 million hectares of arable land being cultivated.” Last week the Finance Minister proposed, amid insufficient budget revenues, that owners of agricultural land who do not use it for growing crops be subjected to a tax penalty, but the idea is as yet a draft law. Now, an owner of arable land in an unincorporated area pays an annual tax between 36 and 43 RON per hectare to the local budget.

First, a general direction needs to be set for policies, argues the owner of Cerealcom Dolj. “We have to have a long-term strategy, pursued by all parties, so that once every four years, when changes occur at ministry level, there are no legislative contradictions,” is also the opinion of Nicolae Sitaru, chairman of the Association of Cereal and Technical Crops Growers in Ialomita county.

The lack of professional farming in Romania was in part generated by the inconsistency of reforms after 1989. “When agriculture was collectivised, people were stripped of their land and of their production means. In 1990, when the land was given back, they were not also given the means to work it.” With descendents now mostly living in cities, and amid unwillingness to form associations, the average cultivated plots in Romania are much smaller than in the Czech Republic for instance (3.3 ha vs. 84 ha), which is a major deterrent for growth.