By: Dumitru Petre

Dumitru Petre — Wed, 23 May 2007 01:47:24 +0000

Sir,
I have read your survey.
With all due respect for your work may I submit to your attention the fact that Romania, a country with a big production potential does not appear in your survey even if its agricol area (abt 14 mil hectares) is by far bigger than the area of other countries which appear in you report and the idle areas (areas free/not worked by farmers) of abt 2.5 mil hectares from Romania exceed by far areas cultivated in other countries (mentioned by you in your survey).
How many countries in EU are producing abt 1.5 mil to oilseeds/year ?
It’s right that the yields for grains/oilseeds are well below those from EU but the Romanian farmers use 10 times less fertilizers than their counterparts from EU (therefore one could say that local farmers are close of making a bio-farming), their machineries are old and the credits/financing to the Romanian farming community are totally non existent (here the main currency is ,, barter deal “). Same for basic crops insurance (failing which farmers refrain from making serious investments).
Moreover, the issue of sustainability is also important i.e. it seems that several of the European countries mentioned in your survey
are producing biofuels basis raw materials of questionable sustainability (what is the area of tropical forests cut down to be replaced with palm trees or sugar cane for biodiesel or bioethanol ?).
May I invite you to consult various official EU papers which have highlighted that Romania has indeed the potential of becoming a large European producer of biofuels.
And finally one question :
why do you think that Cargill bought here close of 1 million tons grains/ oilseeds storage capacity plus 2 oilseeds plants, why did Bunge buy several oilseeds crushing plants (the last one just bought less than 2 months ago) and storage spaces and why other major grains traders (such as Glencore or A.C. Toepfer/daughter company of ADM) have set up over the main producing areas networks of facilities for handling/storing grains/ oilseeds ?
I think the answer is that they have good reasons to believe in a bright future of their agri business here.
For further discussions, if you are interested, I remain at your disposal.
Best regards
D Petre

Comments on: Q1 2007 Renewable Energy & Biofuels Country Attractiveness Indices

By: Dumitru Petre