A number of strategies for developing the agricultural sector were worked out during the last few years, but no essential changes occurred in this field, said experts who took part in an economic debate centering on the situation in agriculture and the prospects of developing the sector. Viorel Chivriga and Ion Tornea, of the Institute for Development and Social Initiatives “Viitorul”, explained that such a situation is due to the lack of a clear view on the development of agriculture, IPN reports.

“There were many strategies, but the effects produced by these were very small,” said Viorel Chivriga. According to him, this is due to the inability of the responsible institutions to work out policies that would contribute to the modernization of the sector, the improvement of performance in agriculture and, consequently, to higher revenues in agriculture.

Viorel Chivriga noted that there are agricultural producers in Moldova that obtained good results and that export their goods to the EU and other markets. However, only 40% of the agricultural companies are able to implement new cultivation technologies so that their products could compete with the products on the EU market. “The others are individual companies or peasant farmsteads that produce for the needs of their families. These do not possess resources to purchase modern machinery. Also, the land is parceled out. The lack of specialists in this field is felt,” stated the expert.

Ion Tornea said no important results can be achieved with a separate producer and much broader actions are needed to change the situation in the field. “The difference between the agricultural outputs in our country and in the European countries is of 17 times. In Moldova, the global agricultural production per employee is of US$2,000, while in the EU is of US$35,000. There are no policies to encourage the producers. I do not refer to subsidization only,” he stated.

The experts noted that Moldova cannot export products of animal origin to the EU, except for bee honey and powdered egg. It has been seven years since the EU granted quotas to Moldova for the export of products of animal origin, but these have not been used. There is a low number of specialized farms. On the other hand, some of the producers, including because of the lack of coherent state policies to develop the animal breeding sector, prefer to deal with the re-export of products of animal origin to the EU and other countries.