|
Romania NATURAL RESOURCES
Land
The land itself is Romania's most valuable natural
resource.
All but the most rugged mountainous regions sustain some
form of
agricultural activity. In 1989 more than 15 million
hectares--
almost two-thirds of the country's territory--were devoted
to
agriculture. Arable land accounted for over 41 percent,
pasturage
about 19 percent, and vineyards and orchards some 3
percent of the
total land area.
Romania's soils are generally quite fertile. The best
for
farming are the humus-rich chernozems (black earth), which
account
for roughly one-fifth of the country's arable land.
Chernozems and
red-brown forest soils predominate in the plains of
Walachia,
Moldavia, and the Banat region--all major grain-growing
areas.
Soils are thinner and less humus-rich in the mountains and
foothills, but they are suitable for vineyards, orchards,
and
pasturage.
The area under cultivation has increased steadily over
the
centuries as farming has encroached on forest and pasture
areas,
marshes have been drained, and irrigation has been brought
to the
more arid regions. By late 1986, Romania had extended
irrigation to
roughly one-third of its arable land, and a major campaign
had been
conceived to drain the Danube Delta and develop it into a
vast
agro-industrial complex of some 1,440 square kilometers.
The area
of arable land grew incrementally from about 9.4 million
hectares
in 1950 to slightly more than 10 million hectares in the
late
1980s.
Another strategy to gain arable land was the
controversial
program of systematization of the countryside. This
policy, first
proposed in the early 1960s but seriously implemented only
after a
delay of some twenty years, called for the destruction of
more than
7,000 villages and resettlement of the residents into
about 550
standardized "agro-industrial centers," where the farm
population
could enjoy the benefits of urban life. Only those
villages judged
economically viable by the authorities were to be
retained. Through
eradication of villages, fence rows, and reportedly even
churches
and cemeteries, the government aimed to acquire for
agriculture
some 348,000 hectares of land.
At the very time the government was attempting to
increase the
area of arable land, countervailing pressures were exerted
by urban
development, which consumed large tracts for residential
and
industrial construction. In May 1968, a law was passed to
prohibit
the diversion of farmland to nonagricultural uses without
the
approval of the central government. The law reversed the
previous
policy of assigning no value to land in calculating the
cost of
industrial and housing projects. It did not, however,
curtail the
ideologically driven policy of industrializing the
countryside, and
some of the country's most fertile farmland was lost to
development.
Postwar farming practices took a heavy toll on the
country's
soil resources. It was estimated in the late 1980s that
because of
unwise cultivation methods, 30 percent of the arable land
had
suffered serious erosion. Moreover, residual agricultural
chemicals
had raised soil acidity in many areas.
Data as of July 1989
|
