Silvius Stanciu
Dunarea de Jos University of Galați, Romania.
Title: Wheat production in Romania and the European Union. Evolution and prospective evaluation
Biography
Biography: Silvius Stanciu
Abstract
Romania is a country with an ancient agricultural tradition, being named during the interwar period “the granary of Europe”. Romanian territory has a significant agricultural potential due to its available arable land and to the geographical location, favorable to agriculture. Wheat crops represent a strategic element for the national food security. In Romania, the farmland cultivated with wheat represents approximately 25% of the total arable land and 40% of the total area sown with cereals. The paper proposes an overview of the trends present on the domestic wheat market and its place in the European and global context. The data regarding the farmland and for the wheat production in Romania were collected from Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, the database of the State Institute for Variety Testing and Registration (ISTIS), from the official statistics of the Romanian Institute of Statistics, Faostat, and World Bank Databases. For the literature review, the Web of Science Core Collection database was mainly used, accessed through the intranet network of “Dunărea de Jos” University of GalaÈ›i. The data was selected, processed and graphically represented. The results were interpreted and compared to the reference scientific information from the domain-specific literature. The most nationally-spread varieties of wheat are the common wheat, which occupies 90% of the total agricultural area. Romanian wheat production has steadily increased last period, also recording a significant increase in exports, which, due to steady imports, led to a surplus trade balance. Domestic productivity is kept low compared to the European average. The lack of irrigation facilities leads to a fluctuation in wheat production, which is highly dependent on rainfall. Insufficient licensed storage facilities at a national level leads to supplementary pressure put on local farmers, thus becoming dependent on the prices offered by exporters. The existence of an important gap between the prices set directly by farmers and the delivery prices from the ConstanÈ›a Port shows the tendency towards a number of speculative practices on the cereal acquisition market.
The paper highlighted the existence of a generous natural potential for wheat production in Romania, but also the need for taking a number of measures in order to reduce the dependence on weather conditions.