Florian Bichir: “During an official visit in Bacau, the Prime Minister told the farmers that he wishes to see Romania become the second largest agricultural grower in Europe, following France”.
Calin Popescu Tariceanu advised the farmers to access the European structural funds and mentioned that this money will not simply be given away. The money will have to be invested in projects that would modernize Romania’s agriculture.
While Tariceanu’s exposed his dreams to the farmers in Bacau, over 100 farmers were protesting in front of the Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development.
And while farmers were supposed to dream at EU’s money, they dared to show protest for “ridiculous” things like: the gasoline price, state grants for truck farming, fruit farming and zooculture and for the unreceipted grants from 2007.
According to the leader of Agrostar syndicate, the farmers have been deliberately brought to banckruptcy, so that certain private investors could buy it for cheap. Agrostar blames the romanian politicians for the production decline.
Theoretically, Prime Minister Tariceanu has a point, but hoping that the European El Dorado will solve the situation is a cheap promise, coming from a politician. Has anyone seen a farmer that would know how to access European funding programs? How many of them have internet access or how much money has never been returned because the sums remained unspent?
Furthermore, the Prime Minister uses the joke that’s been around since the end of the First World War that “Romania is Europe’s granary”.
According to Dr. Victor Axenciuc, the reality is far from that: “the statistics clearly show that considering the natural resources, the surface and population and because of the mainly manual labor with low production, Romania could have never been, as the legend has it – Europe’s granary”.
In order to remain in the reality zone, the only country that could aspire to that title is Ukraine. The Prime Minister’s solution sounds like a joke: “We declare wae to the US and then surrender”. Romania’s agriculture managed to change from Ceausescu’s paranoya, into a complete wreck. The property laws have destroyed the vast cultures, the irrigation system, thus turning fields into deserts. This is why countries like Greece or Turkey, who lack abundant rains, have better crops.
Factories are being closed, the state grants do not exist, and supermarkets don’t receive Romanian products. Can we still speak of agriculture? Or, should we ask the European Union's help?
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