Support for bee farmers
The government in Bucharest aims to help beekeepers as well as cattle and sheep breeders.
Florentin Căpitănescu, 06.10.2014, 14:14
The first apiary complex in the world was built in Baneasa, near Bucharest, at the beginning of the 1970s, which shows how important bee-farming was for Romania at a time when agriculture was an important part of the country’s economy. Most of the products deriving from bee farming were exported, which, in the opinion of the communist government of the day, significantly improved the country’s image abroad. When the communist regime collapse in 1989, bee farming went into decline, in particular as a result of the dismantling of the communist farming cooperatives, local structures into which the communists had split farming activity following the seizure of privately-owned land between the end of the 1940s and the beginning of the 1960s.
Twenty-five years after the fall of the communist regime, Romania’s bee farming sector is seeing a revival. Romania is in fact 4th in Europe in terms of its bee farming production. However, just like in the communist years, most of it is exported. At 500 grams per inhabitant per year, Romania’s domestic consumption is far below that of other European states, such as Germany, with its 2 kg per inhabitant per year. Because of bad weather, production dropped this year.
The agriculture minister Daniel Constantin promised to approve aid worth almost 1 million euros this week to help bee farmers. He said the government was also looking for ways to compensate cattle and sheep breeders who can no longer export livestock because of the bluetongue disease. Daniel Constantin, speaking about possible solutions to help these farmers:
Daniel Constantin: “If exports of livestock are restricted, we will try to export carcasses and develop abattoirs, so we will probably come up with a specific strategy in this respect in the coming period.”
Farmers have not lost hope yet. Dumitru Andresoiu, the vice-president of the Pro Ovis Federation:
Dumitru Andresoiu: “We hope to identify the origin of the disease and prevent it from spreading all over the country. Exports in the meantime have stagnated.”
Problems in the field appeared when Jordan announced a ban on meat imports from Romania, which was the second largest supplier of meat for this Middle East country, after Australia.
