Valvis says this is the first year he harvested so much corn, adding he invested EUR1.5 million in irrigation equipment because of the droughty year.
“We will harvest around five or six tons per hectare this fall,” says Valvis, who owns DornaAgri, a company that has 3,500 hectares of corn crops.
Judging from this estimate, DornaAgri’s harvest should amount to some 20,000 tons of corn that will be turned into biomass.
Valvis also has 300 hectares of organic corn; he will use the harvest to make organic corn flakes, cereal bars, muesli and wafers branded as LaDorna.
This is the businessman’s second venture on the organic product market after the launch the LaDorna organic milk a few years back.
His presence among major farmers of the country is a surprise considering he is better known for Dorna and LaDorna, which he sold to multinational giants like Coca-Cola and Lactalis.
Brothers Ioan and Viorel Micula own almost as much land planted with corn as Valvis, 3,200 hectares, via their Westgrain company.
Another major competitor on the local corn market is Lebanese Jihad El Khali, who has 11,200 hectares of corn crops operated via two companies he owns, Agro Chirnogi and Maria Trading. Jihad El Khali is one of the lowest profile businessmen on the local market.
Culita Tarata, who farms about 56,000 hectares of land via his TCE 3 Brazi company, expects to harvest eight tons of corn per hectare. He is pleased with this year’s harvest, but worried about 2012, because of the droughty autumn.
An average harvest of 8 tons per hectare from the 9,800 hectares where Culita Tarata planted corn translates into about 78,000 tons, worth some EUR15.4 million on international markets.
Ioan Niculae, another major owner of corn crops will harvest about 46,000 tons of corn from 4,600 hectares of land. His corn harvest is worth over EUR9 million.
This year’s corn harvest should amount to 10.5 million tons, the best of the last seven years, data provided by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development reveal. This means 1.5 million tons more than last year.
Romania is therefore among the top ten countries in the world by corn harvest for the second year in a row, behind the United States, China and Brazil and ahead of India and Russian Federation, data from the United States Department of Agriculture shows.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)