Household and peasant farms can sell their white wine grapes for 2.60 – 3 lei a kilogram and the red varieties for 5 lei, the Ministry of Agriculture said, quoted by Info-Prim Neo. According to Agriculture Minister Valeriu Cosarciuc, the output of grapes this year is by about 100,000 tonnes smaller than last year, yet the household farmers are offered better prices. “Considering that the barriers to grape exports were removed as well, the competition on the market is greater and to achieve their production targets many wineries took loans from banks to pay the farmers”, said Cosarciuc at a news conference. The debt from the previous years owed by the wineries to the grape producers also reduced from 200 to 60 million lei. According to the minister, the producers of grains, corn, sunflower and sugar beet also have fair chances to improve their outcomes as the outputs are expected to increase compared with 2009. “This year sugar output is predicted to top 120,000 tonnes, at a domestic demand of 65,000 tonnes. So efforts are made to identify external markets to sell the remainder after the exhaustion of the export quota offered by the EU under the autonomous trade preferences”, said Valeriu Cosarciuc. Overall, agricultural output increased in 2010 by 11.4 percent and food industry production by 15.5 percent. Agricultural exports rose in the first quarter by 45 percent. Agricultural and food industry production accounted for 22 percent of GDP in the first half of the year.