Romania has an agrarian surface of 14.7 millions hectares, 9.4 millions hectares being plough-land.  It is a very high quality land which unfortunately Romanians don’t exploit to its highest potential, mostly due to the fact that those living in the rural area can’t afford to buy enough land or the necessary equipment to work it. The lack of investment in machinery and irrigation, and low subsidies compared to the European standards, add to these problems.  For this reason, many of them prefer to sell the plots they have, the price of one hectare being about €2,000, much less than the price of land in Europe’s more developed countries.

Individuals can’t buy land in Romania yet; however, they can acquire land if they register as a business and acquire the land with the purpose of developing a business.

There isn’t a centralised statistic showing the numbers of companies with foreign capital that own agrarian land in Romania, but market information indicates that currently there are in Romania thousands of companies with foreign capital which control already a few hundred thousands hectares. Most of these entrepreneurs are European, French, Italians, Spanish, Germans, Danish and British as well as Arabs as Israelis. The highest numbers register among French and German investors.

Most of those buying land in Romania with the purpose of developing business invested in Eco Agriculture.

Agriculture was an important driver of the economy last year, accounting for 0.7 points of Romania’s 2.5% GDP growth and making up between 8% and 10% of overall GDP. The rich 2011 harvest confirmed Romania’s position as one of Europe’s leading agricultural producers.

A few aspects are admitted to have contributed to these better results: good weather, rising commodity prices, more effective delivery of subsidies which reduced the land not under cultivation from 3m to 1m hectares in the past few years, and the improved absorption of crucial EU funding.

However, despite the good results and the big potential, Romanian Agriculture is still underperforming, or as the Financial Times put it last week, the slumbering giant of Romanian Agriculture is still performing well below its potential. Which means there is plenty of room for new projects, ideas and investments coming from British companies looking for high quality unexploited land to expand their operations, set up new farms and new points for trade.

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