In January, Romania imported goods worth more than 9 billion euros, while exports were around 7 billion, in other words, we need to export two billion euros to balance the balance. The fact that we are in this situation (we have been living in deficit for 30 years) is only one of the consequences of bad policies in agriculture and the lack of reforms in the labor market.

“We export significant volumes of products with a low market value and at the same time we import, among other things, agricultural residues, which are mainly used in animal husbandry, as well as agro-food products obtained after the industrial processing process. It is not by chance that in the post-December period, a deficit (the difference between the amount of export and import of agri-food products) of more than 22 billion euros accumulated from the trade in agri-food products,” the president noted. Andriy Tudorel said this in an analysis by the National Institute of Statistics for HotNews.

In apples, we produce only 4.5% of European production, while Poland produces almost 30% of EU production

“When it comes to apples, Romania produces only 4.5% of European production, while Poland produces 29% of EU apples. Likewise, we have only 0.6% of European beef production, 1.5% of pork and 3.4% of chicken. Why are these numbers important? Because they are visible further in the trade balance. If we look at the trade balance, we have a large structural deficit of agri-food products, which is in several large products: meat, vegetables, fruits, milk and dairy products,” explains Ionuts Dumitru, Chief Economist of Raiffeisen Bank, in an interview at HotNews.UA

Romania is among the top five European countries in terms of arable land. We should be a big player, but we are not

In terms of our size as an agricultural player, we should be a very large player at the European level. “When 20 percent of the employed population produces only 4 percent of your GDP, that means we have a lot of inefficiencies in the use of labor in agriculture. At the same time, we have this problem of natural agriculture. If we look at the numbers, we will see that approximately 87 percent of the population employed in agriculture is the so-called “self-employed”, most of them are engaged in what we call subsistence agriculture, Dumitru also said in an interview.

Small farms, slow merging – how to be efficient?

The average size of a farm in Romania is 3.7 hectares, which is ridiculously small, because it is impossible to run an efficient farm on 3.7 hectares. In the Czech Republic, the size of the farm is 130 hectares. Even our Bulgarian neighbors have an average size of 22 hectares and have a very high rate of unification. In our country, unification is much slower.

We have one of the highest percentages of farms in Europe where the manager is over 65 years old. We have aging farm managers and that obviously has serious consequences as well.

In animal husbandry, we are at the bottom of the European ranking

We also have a big problem with animal husbandry. In terms of the number of animals/farm, we are the last in the EU. Even in terms of the number of animals per hectare, everything is bad for us, and all this is also reflected in the trade balance.

Agricultural production is very dependent on the climate, and we have not invested anything in irrigation, says the chief economist of Raiffeisen Bank.

We are weak with potatoes (5.8%), with sugar beets – a disaster, we import almost everything. In general, we are doing very poorly with vegetables (4.2%), but our potential is much greater.

Likewise, we have only 0.6% of European production of beef, 1.5% of pork, 3.4% of chicken and only 2.6% of milk. And these figures are further visible in the trade balance…

We have a large structural deficit of agri-food products, which is in several large products: meat, vegetables, fruits and milk and dairy products.

In addition, we use soil resources and do not restore them, – says Dumitru.

We are a country with a slightly negative balance of nitrogen nutrients – we are the only EU country with such a negative balance. In essence, we are giving less nutrients to the soil than we are extracting from it.

Romania is a country where honey and milk flow, with the clarification that they flow from imports

Every year, we import 220 million liters of milk from all over Europe into the country. From Denmark and Spain to the nearest Belgium, France or Greece – all European states pour milk into Romanians’ cups. As for honey, it comes from distant China, from where we bring more than 3 million euros annually.

Over the past 30 years, the import of milk and dairy products has increased by almost 2000%.

The annual deficit was more than €104 million/year, of which more than 90% was accumulated in the post-accession period (the annual average was almost €215 million), explains INS Chairman Tudorel Andrei in his recently published book. “Foreign trade of Romania in agro-food products 1990-2020” in the publishing house of the Romanian Academy.

1990 was the year when one of the sharpest reductions in the export of agri-food products in the country’s economic history was recorded. The volume of exports in value units decreased in 1990 compared to the previous one by almost 85%, and in natural units the reduction was even greater, over 94%, explains Andrii Tudorel.

As examples, the head of the INS talks about the reduction of exports: meat and edible organs (-97%), milk and dairy products (-97%), vegetables (-87%), fruit (-67%), meat and fish semi-finished products (-82%), Sugar and sugar products (-98%), Vegetable and fruit semi-finished products (-82%) and Alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages (-84%).

Compared with 1989, the import of milk has increased more than 25 times. Over the past 30 years, production has halved

In the production of milk, five countries of the European Union are among the 20 most important countries in the world: Germany has a total production of 33.1 million tons, which is more than 8 thousand kg/animal and an average production per inhabitant of almost 400 liters, says the head of the INS. France ranks second in the EU with a production of 25.5 million tons, an average production per animal of 7.2 thousand liters and an average production per capita of more than 390 liters.

Poland is one of the important producers at the European level, realizing milk production of 14.2 million tons/year, with milk yield per animal of 6.4 thousand kg and average production per inhabitant of 370 liters.

Italy reached a production of almost 12 million tons with an average milk yield per animal of 7.1 thousand liters and an average production per inhabitant of almost 200 liters. With a yield per animal equal to that of Italy, the Netherlands achieves an annual production of more than 10.6 million tonnes, which is 618 liters per capita.

Ireland is the country in the European Union with the highest average production per capita, almost 1,600 liters, with a total production of more than 7.8 million tons and a productivity per animal of almost 5,300 tons.

Returning to Romania, our country has a milk production of almost 4.2 million tons, and the reliance on an animal is much lower than in the case of other important countries of the European Union, only 3.62 thousand tons of milk, the production per inhabitant is 215 liters.

Natural honey: most of it comes from China

China, Ukraine and the Republic of Moldova sweeten us with honey. Of course, together with Poles, Dutch and Bulgarians. You have the data below: