ROUNDUP READY SOYBEAN, A ROMANIAN STORY

Abstract

Romania is one of the few European countries with favourable conditions for soybean production. Herbicide tolerant (HT) soybeans (Roundup Ready, RR) were grown commercially beginning with 1999 and accounted for 68% (or, in absolute figures, 137 thousand hectares) of all soybeans planted in 2006. Farmers who used RR soybeans indicated that this crop was the most profitable arable crop grown in Romania, with gains derived from higher yields and improved quality of seed coupled with lower costs of production. Other advantages: increased convenience and management flexibility; small saving on harvest cost; significant benefits in the crop rotation pattern. In a representative sample of commercial farms, the profit margin per hectare ranked between EUR 100 and 187, corresponding to a production range varying from 3 to 3.5 tonnes/ha, while, in the same market year (2006), conventional soybean growers were running losses. The incremental income was the result of herbicide cost reduction (on average, 1.9 treatments applied to RR soybeans and, respectively, 4.3 treatments to the conventional one) as well as the higher yields (3-3.5t/ha for RR versus 2 t/ha for the conventional product). In 2006, Romania stood among the eight countries that cultivated this crop worldwide. In 2007, as a Member State of European Union, it banned cultivation of this crop, although growing HT soybeans in Romania generated substantially higher net farm income gains per hectare than in any of the other country using the technology. As a result, in only two years, the area planted to soybeans has shrunk with 70%, while Romania became a net importer of vegetable protein, just like the European Union itself. At the national economy’s level, hard currency losses (as a result of increased imports) are estimated to exceeded $US100 million per year, while domestic farmers are deprived from using a unique opportunity to produce an export crop and lower the cost of animal feed, increasing their competitiveness in the global marketplace. The existence of a legal framework is the necessary, but not the sufficient condition for adopting the right decisions in a certain field and at a certain time. Of equal importance is the enforcement - on a scientifically sound basis and in good will - of the existing laws, for the use of a certain social group and, at the end of the day, of the whole society. At the same time, an excessive legal framework, enforced without responsibility, may trigger dramatic socio-economic consequences.