Marioara RUSU¹ & Gabriel SIMION^2
1Institute of Agricultural Economics, Romanian Academy, Bucharest, rusu.marioara@gmail.com
²Faculty of Geography, University of Bucharest, gabriel.simion@umec.geo.unibuc.ro

FARM STRUCTURE ADJUSTMENTS UNDER THE IRRIGATION SYSTEMS REHABILITATION IN THE SOUTHERN PLAIN OF ROMANIA: A FIRST STEP TOWARDS SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

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During the socialist period, Romania has made significant investments in irrigation that extended the land with irrigation facilities to 3.2 million hectares, which represent over 20% of the agricultural land and one third of the arable land. After the collapse of the socialist regime, in 1989, large components of the irrigation infrastructure have been destroyed. As a consequence, today, only 15.3% of the land areas equipped with irrigation facilities are occupied by the economically viable systems. In the southern part of Romania, in the Romanian Plain, there is a need for irrigations, as drought, which is quite a frequent phenomenon here, has resulted in losses for the agricultural sector. Land reform led to the emergence of a very large number of small-sized farms. The irrigation systems that were mainly developed in the 1970s, meant to serve the large-sized farms, proved to be oversized and impossibly to be operated in the new conditions. This paper investigates the main results on the agriculture following the rehabilitation of the five irrigation systems: Sadova–Corabia, Nicoreşti–Tecuci, Viziru Terrace, Brăila Terrace and Covurlui Plain. The main conclusions reveal that the irrigation systems rehabilitation was positive for development of competitive/intensive agriculture: land consolidation, growth of cultivated areas, increasing share of crops with high economic value and high agricultural productivity.