As Grigorii Baltag, head of the Crop Production Policy Department of MAIA Ministry of Agriculture and Food Industry, noted for Logos Press, over the last five years, the area of corn sowing in Moldova has fluctuated between 400-440 thousand hectares. Including about 200-240 thousand hectares for sowing corn for grain are allocated by medium and large agricultural producers, 180-200 thousand hectares – by small farmers and rural households.
The first category of producers is market-oriented, more or less has funds for advance purchase and infrastructure for storage of agricultural resources. The second category is focused on small-scale production and own consumption of crop agricultural products (in subsidiary livestock farming, for example), a significant number of micro and small farmers do not have the capacity to purchase and store inputs out of season. It is they who are currently experiencing the greatest stress due to rising prices and situational physical shortage of fuel and fertilizers by the beginning of spring field work.
According to Grigory Baltag, if the situation does not change for the better in the near future, there is a possibility that the “individual sector” will either transfer part of the land to the “corporate sector” on short-term lease, or withdraw up to 10-15% of agricultural land from the seasonal turnover – for “black fallow”. It is likely that these will be the lands planned for sowing corn.
The risks are great, but they may not materialize
Viorel Kivriga, an expert in agribusiness, points out the important circumstance that this week there will be precipitation almost everywhere in Moldova. Consequently, the pace of spring sowing – in those regions and farms where it has started – will decrease, or sowing will be delayed for about a week, and maybe even more. In a certain sense, this is a respite and a chance to normalize the situation with the supply of agricultural resources to the RM market. In other words, late sowing increases the probability that a very small area for spring crops will fall out of agricultural rotation.
