You are here » Home » Telling Our Story
First Person
Helping farmers become more competitive as Romania enters the EU
Small Farmers Bring Home More Bacon
Photo: USAID/Paul Trupo
USAID-trained farmer Cristian Axente, center, with some of the 250 piglets he bought on his farm in Olari village, Romania. In three months, each piglet had gained about 80 kilos, which meant they were ready for market.
“I ended up getting nearly double the price for my crops! That let me buy more high-quality pigs at better prices,” said Cristian Axente, a farmer from Olari village in Romania’s western Arad County.
Pork meat is a staple of the Romanian diet. Yet in the 1990’s domestic production slowed as producers faced competition from abroad. In fact, Romania switched from pork exporter to importer, with annual net imports valued at $200 to $300 million. Now that the country is scheduled to join the EU in 2007, pork producers face even stiffer competition. In addition, they will need to comply with new regulations. USAID is helping farmers to become more competitive in the face of the new competition and comply with stricter regulations through training and technical assistance.
To start, USAID has helped hog producers organize group purchases of both piglets and feed, enabling them to get better prices. With USAID assistance, the Hog Producers’ Association in western Romania’s Arad County identified suppliers for new piglet breeds and improved feed. Using this feed, the new breeds gain weight faster and sells for higher prices than local breeds. USAID also organized field trips so farmers could visit processors and slaughterhouses, promoting greater competition and better prices for quality hogs.
Cristian Axente, a farmer from Olari village, is pleased with the results. Cristian and his family run a small farm of pigs, dairy cows, and crops. By participating in USAID training programs and field trips, Cristian learned that using improved pig breeds could lead to greater profits in “finishing operations” — when farmers purchase eight week old piglets and feed them to a “finished” weight of 100 kilograms. Cristian also learned how to meet EU animal health and safety regulations.
Through the program, Cristian negotiated a crops-for-piglets deal with piglet suppliers in other regions. “I ended up getting nearly double the price for my crops in Sibiu County than I would have locally. That let me buy more high-quality pigs at better prices,” he said. Cristian sold all his finished hogs at higher prices than local pigs earn. “If USAID had not brought small hog farmers from Arad County together, none of us would have thought about group buying or marketing of ‘high genetic’ pigs,” Cristian said. “They introduced us to new suppliers and helped us negotiate good prices. This was an unbeatable deal for my family.”
Print-friendly version of this page (454kb - PDF)
Click here for high-res photo
Back to Top ^ | 
RSS Feed for Recent Telling Our Story Updates
