Agricover, Bunge Start Farmers Support Partnership

Agricover and Bunge have started the SolPro - The National Sunflower Partnership, a program intended to support farmers increase sunflower crop field surface, productivity and quality. Bunge representatives for the Danube Agribusiness Area Osmar Pereira said: "As any partnership, SolPro brings benefits to all participants: sunflower farmers, Bunge as a sunflower processor and Agricover as integrator of agricultural products and services."

Romania"s sunflower crop decreased from 1.6 million tons in 2006 to 521,489 tons in 2007 against an overall consumption of 1.2 million tons necessary to produce vegetable oil. At global level, demand for oil-bearing seeds has been increasing for the past three years, driven by the take-off in both bio-fuel consumption and edible oil consumption.

Farmers taking part in the SolPro partnership have access to technological packages and integrated services provided by Agricover: quality input to start and maintain sunflower crops (seeds, pesticides and quality fertilizers), logistic and storage services, technical consultancy, financial support and crop insurance. Bunge"s involvement offers farmers the comfort of having a buyer for their crop. In addition, farmers have the option to freeze the price of the crop for any quantity and at any time between the crop start and the end of the current year.

"Agricover is an integrator for agricultural products and services, a link between input producers (seeds, pesticides, fertilizers), farmers and the processing industry," said Agricover CEO Robert Arsene. He announced plans to start similar programs for other industries, including wheat farming, milling and baking.

"Bunge has two main objectives in this partnership. First, we want to mitigate the negative impact that the increase in the price of raw materials may have on the end user. Second, we want to develop our business in Romania, to secure quality raw material in a sufficient quantity in order to avoid imports," said Osmar Pereira.