Abstract:
The transformations in the dairy farm sub-sector in Romania, in the first three years after the accession to the EU, were
produced under the milk quota system constraints, with the contribution of certain factors of structural nature, such as
the farm size or milk collection organization, as well as of conjunctural nature, among which the raw milk acquisition
price or the size of support provided from EU and national funds. The paper presents the main factors contributing to
the sub-sector adjustment, reaching the conclusion that the dairy farms evolution after the accession was determined by
the inadequacy between the sophisticated supply management tools, specific to the European single market, and the
difficulties of partial market integration of the dairy farms with surplus labour. Thus, the number of the quota holders
has significantly decreased in recent years, both in the case of milk delivery quota (from 228 thousand to 136 thousand
farmers), and in the case of direct sales quota (from 1.4 to 0.9 million farmers). At the same time, the fulfillment of the
quota allocated to Romania reached about 70% in the quota year 2009-2010, continuing the decreasing trend of the
previous year.
