The price of wheat on international exchanges has risen in the last three months, with this year’s local crop being 10% bigger than last year’s. Farmers have already collected over 200 million euros from exports. How much is this money helping revive a sector where problems are rife?
There has not been much good news in the agricultural sector for many years, with 2010 being no different. Too much or too little rain, flooding or drought, late payment of agricultural subsidies, cancellation of aid for fertilisers are just a few of the problems facing the agriculture.
Farmers have so far exported 1.2 million tonnes of wheat of this year’s overall production (5.7 million tonnes), and collected 200 million euros, writes BUSINESS Magazin weekly (www.businessmagazin.ro).
Although this year’s crop is 10% bigger than last year’s (5.2 million tonnes), it is far from being one of the best – two years ago it amounted to 7.2 million tonnes.
Romanian farmers preferred to export a share of their crop already because the price of wheat shot up in August, reaching as much as 200 euros per tonne, almost double the price charged a few months earlier, after draught ruined crops in Russia (which produces 9% of the world’s wheat) and Ukraine.
Is it little, is it a lot?
Very little, considering the volume of food imported on a loan basis, says Ioan Niculae, president of InterAgro and one of the biggest landowners in Romania.
“Romania only wants to import, and at some point it will have to pay the money back, but nobody knows where it will get it,” says Niculae, adding that, if we consider the agricultural potential, even the big landowners do subsistence agriculture, not high-performance agriculture.

Subiecte #Wheat crop