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Agriculture: Romania and Rep. of Moldova can grow back into Europe's breadbasket
Together, Romania and the Republic of Moldova can grow back into the breadbasket of Europe, through cooperation in agriculture, Romanian Minister of Agriculture Daniel Constantin said on Thursday, January 23, while attending the Eastern Partnership Ministerial Conference on Agriculture in Chisinau.
'By working together in agriculture, Romania and the Republic of Moldova can jointly grow back into the breadbasket of Europe. Thanks to the facilities arising from its status as a EU member, Romania has massively improved its performance in agriculture, and this will continue to happen in the following years too. This trend was visible last year not only in Romania's agricultural output, but also in the openness important countries like China have shown towards the Romanian sector of agriculture. If Romania has these opportunities at hand, the Republic of Moldova too can benefit from them,' said Daniel Constantin.
During the meeting, the Minister of Agriculture also emphasized that rural development priorities and the intervention measures set forth under the National Rural Development Program 2014-2020 are closely correlated with the development priorities identified under Romania's Partnership Agreement, and are aimed at ensuring a consistent approach of the specific needs of rural development and national needs.
The Minister also stressed that this is a highly important event for promoting prosperity in partner countries, for successfully achieving a real exchange of information and best practices with a view to attaining the common goal of ensuring a sustainable development of the agri-food sector and a modernized rural environment that is attractive to the young generations.
As regards the main challenges facing agriculture and rural environment, Constantin said that one of the most important requirements is the existence of a clearly defined policy, capable of providing predictability and ease of implementation, that is discussed and agreed upon with the business, academic and research milieu.
For the period 2014-2020, the evaluation of the needs for the future National Rural Development Program of Romania, has identified the following main challenges: restructuring agricultural holdings, particularly small and medium-sized ones, into market-oriented farms; generational renewal in agricultural holdings; the continuous modernization of the processing sector; the development of the basic infrastructure and services in rural areas; job creation in rural areas.
Minister Daniel Constantin also pointed out that the mitigation of climate change effects is one of the Ministry's permanent concerns.
The AgriMin also expressed his willingness to share with the counterparts from the countries present at the event Romania's experience with devising policies and consulting with the private sector, institutional organization, standards' implementation. On the other hand, Romania too has to learn from the experience of other countries, so that together they should be able to lay the foundations of a highly-performing agriculture in the region, with positive consequences on investment and growth in trade exchanges.
The Romanian Minister of Agriculture on Jan. 23 attended the Eastern Partnership Ministerial Conference on agriculture and rural development in Chisinau, an event attended by the heads of agriculture from EU member states, Armenia, Belarus, Georgia, the Republic of Moldova and representatives of the European Commission.