Drought starts changing the crop structure in Romania
This year's drought has left a deep mark on Romanian farmers, many deciding to change the structure of crops grown on arable farms. So, for the 2024-2025 agricultural year, farmers are betting more on autumn crops and have greatly reduced their areas devoted to spring crops.
This is the finding of entrepreneur Mihai Moraru, President of the Input Agro Romania Association, recently speaking on the Agrostrategia tv program. He analyzed the prospects for the agricultural year 2024-2025, emphasizing the changes that this year's severe drought has brought to the "top" crops.
Record area sown with rapeseed
Moraru noted that the recent rainfalls have been beneficial but have failed to fully replenish the soil water supply. "If we refer to the state of crops reported at this date, for example in Oltenia (south-western Romania) the drought is still present and some autumn crops have even been lost already. In the rest of the regions it is probably the best winter entry stage for rapeseed, with about 900,000 hectares planted, which is a record high, but we will see in spring how many will still remain... Wheat and barley crops are also entering winter in good conditions on about three million hectares. So we are talking about four million hectares of autumn crops," said Mihai Moraru.
Decrease in grain exports. Wheat keeps the largest share
In the first eight months of 2024, Romania exported cereals and cereal-based preparations worth EUR 2.4 billion, down 18% compared to the same period of the previous year, according to data from the National Institute of Statistics (NSI). In the same period, imports of cereals and cereal-based preparations totaled EUR 989.2 million (minus 11.2%, compared to the first eight months of 2023), resulting in a surplus in this segment of more than EUR 1.4 billion.
Romania exported wheat and meslin worth EUR 1.1 billion and maize worth EUR 615.9 million. Cereal exports to European Union (EU) countries amounted to EUR 563.5 million while imports from these countries totaled EUR 243.3 million.