The good crop of 2004 has been reflected in the business of the major farming and foods companies that saw their turnover increase strongly.
Farming group Cerealcom Dolj made a 66 million euro (approximately 2,700bn ROL) turnover last year, nearly 90% higher than in the previous year when it reached 35 million euros (1,300bn ROL).
"This was a good year for farming and that showed in very good crops," says Mihai Anghel, chairman and majority shareholder of Cerealcom Dolj.
The company estimates a turnover growth of 10% for this year.
The 2003-2004 farming year produced very large harvests, compared with the previous year, at more than 9 million tonnes of grain.
Anghel is one of the most important farmers in Romania, together with Ioan Niculae (who owns InterAgro), Adrian Porumboiu (Racova Com Agro Pan Vaslui), Stefan Poenaru (Agrofam Fetesti), Nicolae Mann (Vital & Heyl in Timis County) and Jihad Ibrahim (Agrochirnogi Calarasi). They recently formed the Romanian Agricultural Producers' Employers Association, an organisation that looks after their interests.
The Agriculture Ministry recently took the decision to make significant cuts to the subsidies it pays to various crops, which immediately resulted in many small farmers shifting to those crops still subsidised by the state.
The Cerealcom holding has a storage capacity of 200,000 tonnes/ year thanks to its 5 grain silos and three collection bases. It also has a fleet of 40 trucks for transporting grain.
Romania has negotiated an area of 7.013 million hectares of arable land (compared with the current 9 million hectares), with 2.65 tonnes/hectare average harvest. stelian.negrea@zf.ro
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