RSS
Agriculture : IER: 97 per cent of Romanian farmers are ineligible for the National Rural Development Programme
European Institute of Romania (IER) director Gabriela Dragan says 97 per cent of Romanian farmers are ineligible for the National Rural Development Programme, as the rural areas are highly polarized.
"Agriculture and the rural sectors are very important for Romania; 87pct of the country is considered a rural area; 45pct of Romania's population lives in rural areas. These two figures show that the rural sector is very important. It looks very polarized; in other terms, there are few very large farms on wide areas who draw important financing, and there are many farms on small areas. 97 per cent of farmers are not eligible for the National Rural Development Programme," she said in a Wednesday's IER debate on atypical work in agriculture.
Farms of less than five hectares are 93 per cent of the total numbers and account for 30 per cent of the farmland, while big farms cover 70 per cent of it. The average size of Romanian farms is around 4.3 hectares, Dragan mentioned.
"Clearly, we have small farms living by the day. We all have relatives on the countryside and we know very well how the rural sector looks. It mainly relies on elderly people. We need to think how to attract youth to the rural areas," the IER official asserted.