“There is a market for live cattle trade. Exporters come, pick up the young calves, fatten them here for a little while and then export them to the major fattening farms. The cattle exported are usually those reared by individual households,” explains Vasile Pachitanu, chairman of Angus Ro, an organization of beef cattle farmers.
Exports of live cattle are beyond Romania’s potential, considering the local economy ranks tenth in the EU by number of cattle.
On the other hand, exports of beef carcass are 8.3 times lower in value than the exports of live cattle, putting Romania on the 17th place in Europe, according to Eurostat data.
The gap between the exports of live cattle and the exports of carcass shows how dysfunctional the local agricultural market is. The small cattle farmers do not have the necessary financial strength to expand their farms and sell their calves and the insufficient supply of cattle renders local meat processors uncompetitive on foreign markets.
The cattle market in Romania is in decline after farmers have given up 600,000 head in the last few years. As a result, Romania only has 2 million head of cattle now, one of the lowest numbers in the EU and a density of merely 14.8 head per 100 hectares of farmland.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)