Kate Connolly in Giorgiu
Date:The Guardian Weekly Volume 160 Issue 17 for week ending April 25, 1999, Page 5
PETRE Minca stoops to pick up a handful of soil from his modestly-sized farm in
the village of Daia, in southern Romania. He holds it at shoulder height and
lets it run through his fingers.
"This is so-called pamant negru or 'black soil' and is considered to be some of
the best in the world," he says. It is rich in organic matter, low in salinity,
extremely regenerative -- and under-exploited. It earned Romania the title of
the "breadbasket of Europe" between the wars. Wheat, corn and sunflowers are the
main crops.
The farmer remembers his father's accounts of how the Germans transported
trainloads of it home to enrich their agricultural output during the second
world war. But despite owning 13 hectares Mr Minca has -- since the land was
returned to him in 1990, after 50 years of collectivism -- been unable to make
it pay. He blames a lack of government subsidies, bad management and cheap
imports. All over Romania, the story is the same.
He and his family work their holding by hand, occasionally borrowing a
horse-drawn plough from a neighbour in exchange for part of the crop. His wife
bakes bread in an oven in the backyard. From what little he sells locally, Mr
Minca supports his wife, their four sons and his mother on an income of $70 a
month.
But for the 51-year-old Mr Minca and the other farmers of Daia, in the county of
Giorgiu close to the Bulgarian border, times are about to change. Under a deal
with the Romanian government, American agribusiness is about to arrive.
A consortium of some of the biggest names in the sector -- Monsanto, Cynamid, Du
Pont and FMC will be moving in seed, fertilisers and chemicals, while modern
equipment is shipped in by John Deere, Valmont and Lindsay.
The farmers are to get combine harvesters, tractors and other modern tools to
replace the horse-drawn ploughs. In exchange they will be required to rent out
most of their land to the consortium, keeping a small amount for personal use.
From the land they rent out the farmers believe they will receive the proceeds
of one-third of the yield -- after costs are deducted -- while the consortium
will keep two-thirds.
For the farmers a key inducement is that regardless of the harvest they say they
have been guaranteed a minimum income level -- the proceeds of 1 tonne per
hectare. In five years' time, if they choose to go it alone, the equipment will
be theirs.
In fact, it appears that the best they may get is 15-25 per cent of the yield
before costs are deducted. Even this level, however, is more than the farmers
could reliably expect under their current system.
The consortium will be spending up to about $1 million to equip each "module" of
land -- sections of at least 650 hectares, consisting of land pooled by hundreds
of smallholder families across five counties. Western advisers will also be on
hand.
Dumitriu Marinescu, an electrical engineer who turned farmer in 1991, represents
Giorgiu -- 65 per cent of whose inhabitants are farmers -- at meetings with
Transchem, the Miami-based firm managing the Romania project on behalf of the
multinational consortium. He says the project comes at a critical time, when
"the government will soon have to consider importing grain to feed the country".
Just over half Romania's 9 million arable hectares are being farmed because
efficiency is so low. "This project covers only about half a per cent of the
total, but it's a start," Mr Marinescu says.
The hope of the consortium and the government is that the project will spread
across Romania, a quarter of whose labour force is engaged in agriculture.
For Peter Braun, the commercial director of Transchem, the deal has been
fraught, given a country on the brink of default, changes in government and
conservative farmers.
"These people had their land returned to them less than 10 years ago, and they
are naturally afraid of the Americans coming and taking it away from them," he
says. "It's a big change."
And the head of Transchem in Romania, Radu Georgescu, was unable to say if any
of the incoming American seedstock would be genetically modified varieties: "But
I can tell you it's the best quality seed coming from the United States."
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