Semi-subzistence farms in the future rural development policy

Abstract

In Romania's rural space, small and medium farms are a significant percentage of the total existing holdings, thus showing a significant typology of agricultural holdings. Most of them are represented by composite private-family holdings (plants and animals), self-managed or leased. In this category of farms, the productive activities are combined with family life, in which work is performed almost entirely by family members and the employment (seasonal, especially) is the least used. The economic size of farm may be different, depending on the specificity of each Member State. In Romania, we consider farms between 2 and 40 ESUs as being small and medium. The minimum level of 2 ESU is the level at which we consider that a farm can produce and sell. Analyzing the Eurostat data, we see that this type of farming is in most European countries and also remained practiced in old Member States as well, so we can not ignore it. In Romania, the number of these farms is overwhelmingly higher than in other Member States and what is most significant is the fact that out of the total number of 4,256,200 farms, 3,020,200 have under 1ESU, 800,000 have between 1 and 2 ESUs, 1,236,000 farms have more than 2 ESUs. This depends on the fact that most of these farms have a very low degree of mechanization, a poor agricultural inventory, hence a low agricultural yield.