Reaching an Equilibrium between the Domestic Agricultural Production and Food Consumption in Romania

Type Working Paper
Title Reaching an Equilibrium between the Domestic Agricultural Production and Food Consumption in Romania
Author(s)
Volume 60
Issue 57.6
Publication (Day/Month/Year)
Page numbers 61-4
URL http://spu.fem.uniag.sk/fem/mvd2014/proceedings/articles/Alexandri.pdf
Abstract
The paper attempts to evaluate the implications of Romania’s agriculture evolutions from the last decade upon the population’s food security. The domestic agricultural supply availability and stability have had direct effects upon food security, determining both the equilibrium of markets and individual consumption. At the same time, in the transition period, food security was an explicit objective of Romania’s agricultural policies, which had in view, in a traditionalist approach, to reach a high degree of consumption coverage from domestic production. In this context, the paper investigates the agricultural production self-sufficiency, as well as the stability of agricultural production and prices in Romania, compared to other European countries. The main conclusion is that Romania has an extremely unstable domestic agricultural supply. Agricultural production in Romania is much more volatile than in other European countries due to the structural factors and low input consumption. This results in a deficient self-sufficiency in certain categories of products, for instance in vegetables, fruit, meat and in certain years in cereals. The effects of this situation upon food security were mainly materialized into an increase in the relative food prices in the agricultural years with poor harvests.

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