Life In The Countryside

Romania's agriculture is so rudimentary that the number of Romanian agricultural workers is equal to three quarters of the aggregated number of agricultural workers in The EU before the recent enlargement. This sad statistic was released by Valentin Lazea, chief economist of The National Bank of Romania during the seminar titled "Romania: European Challenges and Perspectives" held late last week. Lazea believes that, in order to push agriculture past this deadlock, The State needs to increase the pensions of the over one million peasants aged over 60 in order for them to afford to cede their land to professional farms. According to Lazea, there are extremely numerous peasants whose pension does not exceed 15 EUR per month.

Ministry of Agriculture officials believe that The State Budget will not cover the increase in the pensions paid to peasants who retire early and sell/rent their land to professional farms. The Ministry also believes that Romania will receive some EU money to fund this project, but only after accession.

"In order for these peasants to survive without their land, the minimum pension should be 70 EUR," Lazea estimated. He added that the next step towards improving rural living standards would be to improve rural infrastructure (or, better said, build rural infrastructure as it barely exists now). Lazea also believes that projects aimed at diversifying rural occupations should be supported, inclusively by supporting rural small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). For the time being, the number of rural SMEs is six times smaller than the number of urban SMEs.