Farming Practices and Policies in Shaping the Organic Agriculture in Romania. A Showcase of Southern Romania

Abstract

Following the pre-accession to the European Union (EU), significant changes have taken place in the agricultural policy and practice in Romania, with implications in the productivity and management of the agricultural landscape. After the EU-accession, the implementation of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) provided support for both rural development and sustainable agriculture. At the same time, the increasing demand of consumers for high quality products on the one hand, and the need to protect and improve the quality of the environment as a result of organic land management practices, on the other, provided the perfect frame for the development of organic farming. The current study aims at providing an insight into the organic agriculture in Romania, with a special focus on the southern part of Romania (Romanian Plain and Dobrogea Plateau), an area which enjoys favourable natural conditions for this type of sustainable agriculture. The key findings of the paper are the identification of the linkages between EU/national policies and organic farming; building up a large geodatabase and providing spatial and statistical assessments of up-to-date records on organic farming based on data provided by the National Institute of Statistics, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development and the EUROSTAT statistics and reports, as well as by the inspection and certification bodies. Based on the data gathered from the 720 organic operators at LAU 2 level in southern Romania, various indicators (e.g. cultivated area with different crops, organic farms by size class of agricultural area used, number of organic operators) were computed and represented spatially using GIS techniques.