Agriculture has been identified among the ten priority areas of action for which we must take very urgent measures, and one of these is the clarification of the way in which food waste or biowaste can be a resource for compost, Mihaela Frasineanu, adviser at the Romanian government, said on Friday at a specialist event.
According to her, after discussions with the relevant associations and with the public institutions involved, a form of the Compost Law was reached, which is in Parliament and will probably be adopted as soon as possible.
"Agriculture has been identified among the 10 priority areas of action for which we must take very urgent measures and one of the very urgent measures is to clarify how food waste or biowaste can be a resource for a natural fertiliser, namely compost. And I think we are at the moment when, after about two years of discussions, a final form of a Compost Law was reached, because the existing one is absolutely non-functional, it could not be applied and that was the problem that very, very many in the field raised. So, a form of the compost law has been reached, which is in Parliament, and I think that, being discussed with many of the associations and with all public institutions, it should be adopted as soon as possible," Frasineanu said at the Pria Agriculture Romania conference.
At the same time, according to her, the Ministry of Energy and the Ministry of the Environment will have to speed up measures related to how to get and store energy to help Romanian agriculture.
"I think it will help everyone and the measures that the Ministry of Energy and the Ministry of the Environment should take moving forward, related to energy and the way we get and store energy, related to the water resources that must be provided for agriculture - and that is why I said the Ministry of the Environment, because it is responsible for water resources, and then the Ministry of Agriculture, through the irrigation systems that must be financed - should help this area and certainly there must be much faster steps. But, unfortunately, there is also a Romanian political context in which we either contradict each other, or we are not allowed to do our job, or we oppose what the other does well. And then it is a great pity that we find ourselves in this situation in which we are a little upset, we do not understand what is happening to us and I think that this has a negative impact not only on food security, but also on health," said the adviser.
In Frasineanu's opinion, farmers should benefit from support schemes, so as not to push current and future generations towards products that are not compliant and that could have a negative impact on health.
"Because we do not have an agriculture that is stimulated or aided by various support schemes that have worked and that should continue to function, if we do not extend these support schemes for farmers, we are only pushing our current generations and future generations towards products that are not compliant, towards products that are not Romanian and that have a negative impact on health. So, from all the points of view that I have said, I think we have to be very active," she said.
She added that it is not yet understood how big the impact of environmental problems is on farmers in the current geopolitical context and Romania's food security should be increasingly concerned.
"We still don't understand how big the impact of environmental problems is on Romanian farmers and we don't understand first of all from this perspective, the international and regional geopolitical context, because I think we need to start talking a lot and very loudly about food security and Romania's food security. That means that we must also think about the extreme weather phenomena and climate change that affect us. So, we have two very complicated situations, two wars that directly impact us - a war that is on Romania's border and which, at least from the point of view of fertilisers and the amount of resources that transit Romania, negatively impacts us. We are talking about a second war that is not at Romania's borders, but which, once again, has a negative impact on Romanian farmers in the price of fuel, in the price of electricity, and again in the problem of fertilisers and we can continue. There is also a third threat - Mercosur - and that is another problem for which we must prepare very well and see what the impact is and what the measures we can take at the level of the Romanian state are, so that this negative impact is not reflected even more in the activities of Romanian farmers," she said.
Regarding environmental issues, namely the impact of climate change on agriculture, Frasineanu said that it is necessary to talk "very clearly" about the preparations that are being made for the near future, but also distant, how plans are made and how agricultural activities are adapted to these phenomena that are increasingly large and affecting more and more.
"And how we prepare will matter in Romania's food security," Frasineanu added.
Comentează