Grain prices "increased by almost 80 percent"

In this agricultural year, grain prices increased by almost 80 percent, mainly due to lower domestic production, but also in international context, explained for Radio Romania Actualitati the President of the Romanian Employers Milling Industry, Bakery and Pasta Products, Aurel Popescu .

The low wheat production due to drought and international markets, where cereal prices have increased by over 50 percent, have made ​​Romanian producers of bakery to work in loss.

Specifically, while raw material prices fell because of the heat and the purchasing power of Romanians has also fallen, bakers say they had to sell at the same prices.

This situation will not continue for long, warned the President of Rompan.

Aurel Popescu asks the government to encourage by economic measures the bakery production.

"The economic component is that where bakers, buying more expensive flour, sure they have to sell more expensive bread than they were selling before the drought. Social component is that the government may intervene and say " we can compensate for this need to increase the price of bread to reduce VAT from 24 percent to 9 percent" and if made ​​from September 1, of course people in the market, consumers will not suffer," says Aurel Popescu.

Crop year 2011-2012 is one of the driest in the past 50 years, say meteorologists.

Agricultural crisis could continue in the absence of rainfall, said Elena Mateescu, director of the National Meteorology Administration.

"Even if we had bouts of instability, as expected since this afternoon and during the night for southern regions, where rainfall can exceed 25 liters insulated per square meter, will produce a slight recovery, but will not compensate long-term deficit in the soil.

"There is a tendency to increase in frequency and if the drought years every decade of the twentieth century we recorded one to three dry years in the first decade of the XXI century we already five dry years," said Elena Mateescu.

In a few days ago, Minister of Agriculture, Daniel Constantin, promised financial support for farmers who have losses due to drought.

Translated by Alexandra-Diana Mircea

MTTLC, Bucharest University