The adjustment factors of the dairy farm sub-sector in Romania

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.