Romania must not sell out traditional farmers to the biotech giants
Romania's smallholder farmers are being denied EU funding as ministers allow the encroachment of large-scale agribusiness
Farmers plough the land near Ploiesti, Romania, using traditional methods. Photograph: Vadim Ghirda/AP
Time in Romania seems to fold with the landscape. Where the
hills of Transylvania rise from the Hungarian plains, life carries on as
it has for centuries; farmers cultivate their small plots of land by
hand while pigs, chickens and children roam unpaved village streets.
However,
where the land drops and the horizon opens up, history closes in and
the reforms of the past 75 years, first under communism and then
capitalism, become evident.
Around villages sealed off by concrete
blocks built under Ceausescu, the land stretches out in huge fields
carrying single crops, occasionally punctuated by the slow crawl of a
€500,000 combine harvester. With uncapped EU subsidies rewarding growth
and productivity over all else, these farms are growing exponentially,
swallowing all in their way. This, it seems, is the future of Romanian agriculture.
Yet, where this model of farming might have worked in other countries,
Romania, like many of its Balkan neighbours, is a different story.
Despite
the best efforts of Ceausescu to throw them off the land and the draw
of new markets and employment opportunities since, around 30% of
Romania's 19 million population continues to live off their subsistence
and semi-subsistence farms. However, both Romanian government and policy
makers in Brussels refuse to acknowledge that these are the people who
prop up the Romanian economy, keep the culture alive and the environment
diverse.
Instead, officials are systematically undermining the
infrastructure that the country relies on. By applying the widely
condemned "one size fits all' policy central to the EU Common Agricultural Policy
(CAP), the vast majority of Romania's farmers are being cast to the
sidelines. At present 51% of the €6bn yearly subsidies coming into
Romania go to just 0.9% of farms, while a total of 70% of Romanian farms
are considered ineligible for subsidies of any kind.
The networks
of trade that peasant farmers have traditionally relied on are being
eroded on both ends. With the seed market largely monopolised by
multinationals who drive the price up for seeds that won't reproduce and
must be bought anew each year, farmers are often forced into spending
unnecessarily. At the other end, local markets are dying under
competition from foreign superstores, selling food at low prices that
are only made affordable by subsidies and technology that the peasant
farmers don't have.
Today, an annual agribusiness conference is being held in Bucharest. It is the first such meeting under the new minister of agriculture, Daniel Consantin,
the third person to hold the position this year. Smallholder farmers
tentatively placed their hopes on Constantin, as he marks a break from
the previous ministers, Valeriu Tabără and Stelian Fuia, both of whom
had previously worked for controversial Biotech giant, Monsanto, and in
favour both of further GMO cultivation and intensive farming.
However,
the conference, sponsored by Monsanto, Pioneer and DuPont, and attended
by some of the country's largest landowners, promises to continue in
the old vein, leaving power in the hands of private investors. Even the
secretary of state for agriculture, Achim Irimescu, was unable to deny
that the sponsors and attendants had political motives for funding the
event, saying "usually (these companies) have an interest in sponsoring
these events for some kind of lobby purposes".
If the conference
turns out as expected, it will be a demoralising sign for farmers and
environmental NGOs who have been fighting for changes in the ministry of
agriculture in the lead up to the CAP reforms in 2013. In order to both
support its citizens and compete internationally on the food market,
Romania needs to start to view its poor farmers as the building blocks
on which it can create its future, rather than a persistent problem that
needs to be phased out. Small farms are able to produce as much or more
food as their large competitors, yet they are being killed off under
the false promise of increasing yields and economic development. Until
Romania focuses funds towards rural development and sustainable
agriculture, it threatens its own culture, environment and the largest
part of its population.
SOURCE: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jul/10/romania-smallhold-farmers
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