Romania is covered in terms of food security, even if this year was a dry one, the Minister of Agriculture, Florin Barbu, told a conference on Tuesday.

„I would like to tell you that Romania is covered in terms of food security. Why do I say this? Because this year too, even if it was dry for the autumn crops, we achieved a production by almost 1.7 million tonnes of wheat higher than in 2023. I still hope that we will also have a very good production of corn, because when you have almost 890,000 – 900,000 hectares of corn in the irrigated system, with an average of 12-14 tonsne, from the beginning, from the 2.7 million hectares sown with corn, only from the irrigation system you make somewhere between 10 and 11 million tonnes export, Romania has the necessary quantities so that we can cover these things,” Barbu said.

He stated that the Ministry of Agriculture must take urgent measures, because this year, from the point of view of climate change and the drought „that has fallen over Romania”, more than two million hectares are affected.

„We are talking here about autumn crops, but also about spring crops. Just yesterday I had a meeting with farmers from a county affected by drought, Olt county, and I want to say that the Ministry of Agriculture and the Government, at the moment, are very close to them, to get over this difficult period. The only solution by which the farmers will be able to continue this activity and be able to sow the next agricultural year is to come with the economic part and with support to reduce the losses they had. Of course, they must have the financial resources so that they can sow the autumn crops,” Barbu added.

The Minister of Agriculture mentioned the importance of investments in the irrigation system in Romania, stating that currently there are more than 1.6 million hectares rehabilitated.

„Currently, Romania has almost 1.6 million hectares that are being rehabilitated and are irrigated. (…). I worked as general director of the National Land Improvement Agency on everything that means the irrigation system in Romania and I remember that in 2014, 180,000 hectares were irrigated in Romania. In 2015, the ambitious plan to rehabilitate over 2 million hectares of irrigation in Romania, with support from the state budget of 1.5 billion. of euros, investments practically in the main irrigation infrastructure. Of course, complementary, through the projects with European funds, we have supplemented for the secondary irrigation infrastructure, direct support to the farmers, so that they can rehabilitate this secondary irrigation infrastructure and purchase those equipment, in order to close this cycle: main infrastructure, secondary infrastructure and equipment for the water to reach the plant,” added the head of MADR.

Last year, Romania obtained a wheat production of 9.635 million tonnes, from an area of 2.208 million hectares, while the production of grain corn was 8.522 million tonnes from 2.373 million hectares, according to the data of the National Institute of Statistics.

Officials from ministries and institutions participate, on Tuesday, in the conference with the theme „Climate change – Great challenges, great risks”, organized by private broadcaster Antena 3 CNN and the National Meteorological Administration.

AGERPRES