From Drought to Heavy Rain

In spring Romania faced one of the severest droughts in the past 50 years and that was followed by heavy downpours, thunderstorms and hail

Daniela Budu, 17.06.2020, 13:50

The
drought and the COVID-19 pandemic have turned 2020 into an atypical
year in which agriculture will not be able to bring money to the
state budget as producers, sellers and farmers have all incurred
significant losses – Dragos Frumosu, head of the Trade Union
Federation in the Food Industry has told in an interview to Radio
Romania. According to him, new price hikes are expected in cereals,
fodder, meat and bakery products. The EU countries will be trying to
protect their productions to ensure domestic consumption and in this
case exports of some products to Romania are likely to diminish.
Dragos Frumosu has also mentioned some possible solutions to this
situation.

Dragos
Frumosu:
Proper management is the only solution in my opinion, we need to
build our own state reserves so that we may ensure the necessary
products until the next harvests. It is also very important to
avoid price fluctuations all throughout the year and I believe all
politicians are responsible for the situation Romanian agriculture is
facing
after
30 years.

The
latest hail and thunder storms have also caused serious damage to
crops in many regions of Romania. Severe weather has reportedly
wreaked havoc on cereals, vegetables, vineyards and fruit trees in
north-western Romania.

Beekeepers
have called on the Romanian authorities for financial support to
compensate for the losses in a country that used to rank fourth in
Europe in terms of honey production.

In
turn farmers have called for investment programmes to encourage local
producers. In an open letter they have explained the Romanian
agriculture is facing a very difficult period against the background
of the economic crisis caused by the Covid-19 pandemic overlapping
the severest drought in the past 30 years. The have come up with a
series of immediate measures including financial aid to small farmers
and the rehabilitation of the country’s irrigation systems.

Last
week, Agriculture Minister Adrian Oros voiced his intention to grant
farmers drought compensations until autumn; the value of these
compensations is to be set after damage assessments have been
completed. On Tuesday Oros announced that 1,165,000
hectares of farmland have been affected by drought in Romania.
Bloomberg pundits have recently announced that Romania and several
other countries in eastern Europe have been affected by the severest
drought in the past century.

(translated
by bill)