Despite the bad news of 2009, Stefan Poienaru remains
\noptimistic: he invested more in raw material and worked the land
\nmore efficiently than in previous years to offset the decline in
\nturnover next year. “Those who did not have such a positive
\napproach will go through two bad years in a row and prolong the
\nailment,” Poienaru says. “We must not skimp on technology – with
\nproper technology you get good results; if the weather helps, too,
\nyou get outstanding results,” the businessman says.<\/p>\n
Stefan Poienaru, however, is one of the few farmers who can afford
\nto make such calculations. Most of the arable land in the country
\nis worked by small farmers and subsistence farming accounts for
\nmore than 90% of the farms. There are but a handful of people to
\nhave amassed a lot of farming land: Stefan Poienaru, Culita Tarata,
\nIoan Niculae, Adrian Porumboiu and Mihai Anghel own 200,000
\nhectares of the cultivated area of the country, that is about
\n2%.<\/p>\n
As far as Poienaru is concerned, he evaluates his business at 15-16
\nmillion euros this year, compared with 26 million euros last year,
\nwith a 7% profitability (about 1.9 million euros). The year 2009
\ncame with a series of bad news: on the one hand, production stood
\nat 35% of last year’s harvest, drought affected the crops, and the
\nlosses caused by disasters are put at some three million euros.
\nGrain prices have not helped farmers, either, as they went down by
\nabout 20% compared with last year to 0.4 RON\/kilogram, while the
\nsunflower price fell 30% to 0.7 RON\/kilogram. Actually, companies
\nin this business said 2009 was the worst year for Romanian
\nagriculture.<\/p>\n
Many are blaming the severe fragmentation of plots of land after
\n1990. About 60-70% of the total farming land is fragmented into
\ntiny bits “and there is no profitability (in it i.e.)” says Mihai
\nAnghel, the owner of Cerealcom Dolj. He adds that the potential of
\nthe Romanian agriculture is to feed 80 million people. “I don’t
\nwant as much land as I have now. I for one do not believe in the
\nfuture of big farms,” Stefan Poienaru says. The agriculture model
\nhe sees for Romania is that of a small plot of land, worked by a
\nfamily, where owners know exactly what resources they used and reap
\nthe benefits of their work in full.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In twenty years of capitalism, Stefan Poienaru, an agronomist by training, has become the fifth leading farmer of the country, running a group of companies whose business totalled 26 million euros in 2008. He reveals how he achieved it exclusively for BUSINESS Magazin.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11763],"tags":[10617,10616,15613,15612,15604],"class_list":["post-17149","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bm-english","tag-adrian-porumboiu","tag-culita-tarata","tag-farmers","tag-farms","tag-stefan-poienaru"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bm.dev.synology.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17149","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bm.dev.synology.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bm.dev.synology.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bm.dev.synology.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bm.dev.synology.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17149"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/bm.dev.synology.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17149\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37103,"href":"https:\/\/bm.dev.synology.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17149\/revisions\/37103"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bm.dev.synology.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17149"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bm.dev.synology.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17149"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bm.dev.synology.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17149"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}