Agriculture: Drought causes massive losses of corn and sunflower, deepens imbalances in Romania's agriculture

  The drought of 2025 is deepening the imbalances in Romania's agriculture: corn and sunflower crops up to 80-90% damaged in the south of the country, and increasingly more farmers are talking about bankruptcy and abandoning these crops, according to Chairman of the League of Romania's Agricultural Producers' Associations (LAPAR) Nicu Vasile.Although the Minister of Agriculture, Florin Barbu, has announced record yields for autumn crops, reality in the field is different due to huge losses, growing insolvencies and an irrigation system that covers less than 20% of the country's arable area.The lack of a long-term strategy pushes Romanian agriculture below 50% of its real potential, Barbu said in a press statement released on Monday."Good news from the Minister of Agriculture, Florin Barbu, who announced a production of 19.3 million tonnes of cereals (wheat, rye, oats, barley) and rapeseed, of which 2.5 million tons are rapeseed. (...) But what does the face of the disaster look like, which the Minister of Agriculture does not talk about? Corn and sunflower crops are 80-90% damaged in the southern counties of the country. Many farmers who have stubbornly set up these crops this year as well, after the disaster they have experienced over the last four years also due to drought, have found themselves in an even harder situation. Last year, more than 2 million hectares of corn and sunflower crops were affected by drought. This year, according to LAPAR data, the situation will be even worse," said Nicu Vasile.According to him, farmers have begun to abandon these crops that are increasingly vulnerable to drought, and the compensation promised by the government does not even cover the startup costs. In addition, 3% of the APIA subsidy was redirected to the budget for compensation, while statistics show that, annually, over 7.2 million hectares of agricultural land are exposed to the risk of drought according to data collected from 1950 to 1997 when Romania still had agricultural research.The LAPAR official said that Romania still depends on the vagaries of the weather, given that out of the 9.7 million hectares of arable land, only 1.6 million are prepared for irrigation, and about 500,000 ha are effectively irrigated per year out of the 1 million hectares contracted by farmers, according to ANIF data. "Much too little, if we take into account that the arable area of the country is about 9.7 million hectares. The irrigation system, which was designed before the '80s, was provided with reservoirs with a very large capacity to serve other purposes: protection against floods, development of fish farming and development of hydropower systems," according to Vasile.He believes that things would have looked much better today if Romania had managed to irrigate more. In the absence of irrigation, "the profits of many farmers have disappeared under the heat of the sun.""As I have repeatedly pointed out, the farmers' support is not limited to the one underlined by the Minister of Agriculture. In addition to subsidies, which should be comparable to those received by farmers in the West, they need a fair market. You cannot resist year after year when inputs become more expensive two, three times, and the selling price of production stagnates or even decreases, as happened in certain periods, this year for wheat," he said.The consequences can also be seen at a financial level. The June 2025 Financial Stability Report shows that the debts of the agricultural sector increased by 27% in June 2024 as against the same month in 2023, and the number of undercapitalised companies is increasing. In 2024, 123 agricultural companies filed for insolvency, and almost half of those whose applications were admitted went directly bankrupt.According to Vasile, this year the situation could become even worse, given that data with the National Companies Registry showed that in the first nine months of the year almost 100 companies went insolvent, and a little more than half went bankrupt."The agricultural year is over, and today we are at the time of counting. Let's highlight the good parts, that is, the record yields of cereals and rapeseed and thank the farmers who worked to obtain them, but equally important, from the point of view of LAPAR, is to find solutions for what is not working. And such solutions can be found only through an open and sincere dialogue based on the analysis of figures, the achievements of the agricultural sector and the development of correct plans for the new agricultural year between the government and farmers' associations. It would be time to seriously discuss the role that Romanian agricultural research must play in the new climatic conditions after we have ignored it for many years. Unfortunately, however, the Ministry of Agriculture has only faked this dialogue for years, and those who pay are the Romanian farmers and consumers, with the proof being the increasing imports of agri-food products and the increase in the consumer's daily cost, which leads to a sharp decrease in the population's standard of living."In a social media post on Sunday, Agriculture Minister Florin Barbu announced bumper yields of autumn crops obtained by Romanian farmers. "Record yields of autumn crops obtained by our farmers! This is the result of the right support given to farmers. Agriculture is Romania's greatest wealth, and we have to buy Romanian products."According to Barbu, Romania's cereal production increased from 12.5 million tonnes in 2022 to 14.4 million in 2023, 14 million in 2024 and 19.3 million tonnes in 2025.