Romanian farm losses at 2bn euros from drought: associations

Romanian agriculture has been devastated by a drought over several months with losses estimated at two billion euros ($2.2 billion), farming associations said Tuesday.

"The losses are enormous, they've risen to two billion euros now but they could go even higher if the heatwave and the lack of rain continue," said the head of the Romanian League of Farmers, Laurentiu Baciu, quoted by the Mediafax agency.

"There are regions of Romania where it hasn't rained since April," he said.

Agriculture accounts for 6.0 percent of gross domestic product in Romania, one of the poorest countries in the European Union.

"It's a disaster. The farming year which is well under way is drawing to a close in a catastrophic way," the head of a grain growers association, Alexandru Baciu, told AFP.

In the western region of Mehedinti, "the sunflower crop is entirely burnt on thousands of hectares, the same as corn," said Alexandru Stroescu of a local growers' association there.

"For four weeks there has not been a drop of rain while temperatures have not dropped in the middle of the day below 35 degrees" Celsius (95 degrees Fahrenheit), he said.

The association of Romanian farmers estimated that between 30 to 40 percent of crops in the south and east of the country have been affected by the drought, the worst since 2008.

The farmers blame the government for failing to deliver on reviving the irrigation system which during the communist era covered 3.5 million hectares (8.6 mn acres) but today covers barely 300,000 (740,000).

"It's up to the state to put in place an irrigation infrastructure at the national level because farmers alone do not have the capacity to do it," said the association's president Stefan Poienaru.

Meanwhile, the Romanian agriculture ministry told AFP it did not have an overall estimate of the effects of the drought, but noted that publication of figures too negative could trigger "artificially higher prices of agricultural products."