“Potato harvest will be 15% to 20% lower this year. We had a bad bout of blight during the early vegetative phase and farmers who were unable to protect their crops took losses. The second cause is the aggressive drought in July and early August. Anyway, domestic harvest is enough for the national consumption so there’s no disaster here,” Botoman told ZF.
Romania’s potato production is worth more than EUR800 million, according to ZF’s calculations. Romanians eat about 100 kilograms of potatoes per capita a year, according to the National Statistics Institute. The country ranked eighth in the EU by potato production last year, with a total harvest of about 2.8 million tons, Eurostat data show.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)