Our country should not suffer from a food crisis. Just kidding, we won’t have to eat insects if we use the agricultural potential we have wisely, providing raw materials for livestock and the domestic food industry, as well as intensifying food production, ASE Rector Nicolae Istudor told the BNR-ASE annual conference on Tuesday – “Navigating among of overlapping crises” held at the Central Bank.

Istudor, who is a specialist in the provision and management of material resources in agriculture and the food industry, also spoke on Tuesday about the need for a new agrarian policy “adapted to new times”.

What else did the rector of AES say:

• The country’s agricultural production is the main source of ensuring national food security, and the degree of ensuring food security at the expense of own production indicates the degree of self-sufficiency in food.

• The degree of food self-sufficiency varies from one state to another, depending on the agricultural potential, respectively the area of ​​land by year. Regarding agricultural potential, Romania has a high agricultural potential, as evidenced by the agricultural area, which in 2020 was almost 13.6 million hectares, of which more than 65%, i.e. almost 9 million hectares, according to Eurostat data, are arable.

• I’ve been traveling around the country more lately and I didn’t like what I saw. I see too much yellow in the field, which means canola. I don’t know if this is really good for us and food security.

• In a good agricultural year in our country, the level of self-sufficiency is more than 100% in the group of grain and cereal products, but there are also groups of products with a rather low level of self-sufficiency, among which pork and primarily beef, as well as fruits, fish and sugar.

• Another form of food crisis that is currently manifesting is an inflationary food crisis, caused by the increase in prices of agri-food products, which causes a decrease in the purchasing power of consumers. The entire world has long been in a state of food crisis, at least in terms of prices, which have risen sharply and are making more and more people unable to afford food. It can be said that the food security of our country is a problem of distribution, not availability.

• Under these conditions, efforts should be aimed at creating and strengthening agricultural organizations of optimal size, viable, with the aim of producing qualitatively homogeneous products and competitive from a qualitative and quantitative point of view. They must ensure food safety and security, as well as modernize and improve the distribution of agri-food products

• Consecutive investments, both from national and European funds, are needed, given that the European Union budget for the implementation of common political rules in the current period has been reduced by approximately 5% for the payment component and, accordingly, for rural development by 15%. I don’t know if this was really a good move in the face of the impending food crisis.

• We also need to be aware of a possible crisis in the supply of skilled labor which can be avoided by our greater care and understanding of the younger generation, which should not be judged harshly as we still have young people who want to learn and prepare for the future. Our main goal is to train specialists for the economy of our country. Mainly, I recognize that this goal is getting harder to achieve, but we also need to do more to achieve it. When we talk about us, I mean family, school, and here we include universities and representatives of the economic and social environment. State institutions should also be included here.