Published in Scientific Papers. Series "Management, Economic Engineering in Agriculture and rural development", Vol. 23 ISSUE 3
Written by Mariana BURCEA, Ionela Mituko VLAD, Nicoleta OLTENACU

The purpose of this study is to analyze the stages through which Romanian agriculture and the land of ownership had passed, namely the evolution of the Agricultural Land Fund, the dynamics of land use by categories of use, starting with the post-communist period, during which the agricultural land division was a notable process for this period for Romania, as for all former communist countries. The research showed that the degree of land fragmentation is high in our country, the greatest division being found in the category of areas below 0.5 ha, with 1.06 million owners (farms with or without legal entity, natural persons, individuals, companies etc.), summing up an area under exploitation of 261.92 thousand ha. On average, a number of 500.68 thousand owners work small areas of land in the size category of 0.5 – 1 ha, 1 – 2 ha and 2 – 5 ha. To examine this situation, there were used and processed a wide range of socio-economic statistical data (land use mode, agricultural land structure and utilised agricultural area by size classes), provided by different official databases. Although Romania is located in a geographical area with high quality of land and a favorable climate for agriculture, our country is still struggling to recover the competitiveness gap compared to countries with a similar communist period from Europe, considering the fact that the large number of land owners (approximately 2.84 million), do not support the stimulation of competitiveness in agriculture, land fragmentation being manifestly pronounced and obvious.

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