Over 600,000 subsistence farmers own around 50 pct of agricultural area

Over 600,000 farmers in subsistence agriculture own around 50 pct of the agricultural area of the country, but achieve 10-15 pct of the agricultural production, said, on Tuesday, the chair of the Committee for Agriculture of the Chamber of Deputies, Adrian Chesnoiu. "Romania is a country that is divided in three categories, I am referring mainly to the vegetable agriculture area. The first category would be subsistence agriculture. On the basis of data we hold, we have over 600,000 farmers committed to the agriculture area, but on very small land surfaces - and where we could say agriculture is still done by hoe and wagons or carts. It's a rather large expanse, but we can see that this agriculture area is the one found mainly in the rural environment of the population, still a majority in Romania - and which does not foresee the development of a commercial activity in this domain of subsistence agriculture. Practically, they're ensuring their livelihood," said Chesnoiu, in a videoconference about intelligent agriculture. According to him, over 600,000 farmers in subsistence agriculture achieve 10-15 pct of agricultural production. "Then, we have a category of medium-sized farmers where we can talk about farms between 10 and 100-150 hectares of land, which are slightly more equipped, who derive incomes exclusively from agriculture. On the performance area, we are talking about approximately 4,000 farmers owning 30 pct of the agricultural area of Romania, but who generate 70 pct of the cereal productions recorded in Romania and they cannot do this but by intelligence and performance," Adrian Chesnoiu also said. AGERPRES (RO - author: Nicoleta Banciulea, editor: Oana Tilica; EN - author: Razvan-Adrian Pandea, editor: Simona Iacob)