Catalin Corbea stopped at the edge of a sprawling barley field at his farm in Prundu, 30 miles outside the Romanian capital Bucharest, and pinched a spiky flowery head from a stem, rolled it between his hands, and then stuck a seed in his mouth and bit.
“Another 10 days to two weeks,” he said, explaining how much time it took for the crop to be ready for harvest.
Mr. Corbea, who has been a farmer for nearly three decades, has rarely seen a season like this. The bloody intrusion of the Russians into Ukraine, a breadbasket for the world, has revolutionized global grain markets. Coastal blockades have detained millions of tons of wheat and maize in Ukraine. With famine haunting Africa, the Middle East and elsewhere in Asia, a frenetic race for new suppliers and alternative shipping routes is underway.
“Due to the war, there are opportunities for Romanian farmers this year,” Corbea said through a translator.
The question is whether Romania can take advantage of this by expanding its own agricultural sector while closing the food gap left by landlocked Ukraine.
Romania is well positioned in many respects. The port at Constanta, on the west coast of the Black Sea, has been a crucial – albeit small – transit point for Ukrainian grain since the beginning of the war. Romania’s own agricultural production is dwarfed by Ukraine’s, but it is one of the largest grain exporters in the European Union. Last year it sent 60 percent of its wheat abroad, mainly to Egypt and the rest of the Middle East. This year, the government has earmarked EUR 500 million ($527 million) to support agriculture and maintain production.
Yet this Eastern European country faces many challenges: farmers benefit from higher prices, but are faced with rising costs of diesel, pesticides and fertilizers. Transport infrastructure across the country and in its ports has been neglected and outdated, slowing the transit of its own exports, while also hindering Romania’s efforts to help Ukraine end Russia’s blockades.
But even before the war, the global food system was under pressure. Covid-19 and related supply chain blockages had pushed fuel and fertilizer prices up, while brutal dry spells and unusual flooding had dwindled crops.
Since the start of the war, about two dozen countries, including India, have tried to increase their own food supplies by restricting exports, which in turn has exacerbated global shortages. This year, droughts in Europe, the United States, North Africa and the Horn of Africa have all taken an extra toll on the harvest. In Italy, water in the agricultural-producing Po Valley has been rationed after river levels dropped enough to reveal a barge sunk in World War II.
Rain was not as plentiful in Prundu as Mr. Corbea would have liked, but the timing was right when it fell. He bent down, picked up a handful of dark, damp earth and stroked it. “This is a perfect country,” he said.
Thunderstorms are predicted, but this morning the seemingly endless bristles of barley flutter under a cloudless, heavenly sky.
The farm is a family affair, involving Mr Corbea’s two sons and his brother. They farm approximately 12,355 acres and grow canola, corn, wheat, sunflowers, and soy and barley. Across Romania, yields are not expected to match the record production of 29 million tons from 2021, but the harvest prospects are still good, with plenty available for export.
Mr. Corbea climbs into the driver’s seat of a white Toyota Land Cruiser and drives through Prundu to visit the cornfields, which will be harvested in the fall. He has been mayor of this city of 3,500 for 14 years and waves to every passing car and pedestrian, including his mother, who stands in front of her house as he sails by. The trees and splashes of red-pink rose bushes that line each street have been planted and cared for by Mr Corbea and his workers.
He said he employed 50 people and brought in 10 million euros a year. In recent years, the farm has invested heavily in technology and irrigation.
Amid rows of leafy green corn, a tall irrigation system with central pivots perched like a giant skeletal pterodactyl with outstretched wings.
Due to price increases and better production of the watering equipment he has installed, Mr. Corbea expects revenues to increase by €5 million or 50 percent in 2022.
The costs of diesel, pesticides and fertilizers have doubled or tripled, but for now the prices Mr Corbea said he could get for his grain more than offset those increases.
But prices are volatile, he said, and farmers need to ensure that future earnings will cover their investments over the longer term.
The calculus has paid off for other major players in the industry. “Profit has increased, you can’t imagine it, the biggest ever,” said Ghita Pinca, general manager of Agricover, an agribusiness company in Romania. There is huge potential for further growth, he said, although it depends on increased investment by farmers in irrigation systems, storage facilities and technology.
Some smaller farmers like Chipaila Mircea have had a harder time. Mircea grows barley, maize and wheat on 1,975 acres in Poarta Alba, about 240 miles from Prundu, near the southeastern tip of Romania and along the channel connecting the Black Sea to the Danube.
Due to drier weather, his production will decrease compared to last year. And with fertilizer and fuel prices rising, he said, he expects his profits to fall as well. Ukrainian exporters have lowered their prices, which has put pressure on what he sells.
The farm of mr. Mircea is about 24 km from the port of Constanta. Normally a major grain and trade hub, the port connects landlocked Central and Southeastern European countries such as Serbia, Hungary, Slovakia, Moldova and Austria with Central and East Asia and the Caucasus. Last year, the port handled 67.5 million tons of cargo, more than a third of which was grain. With the port of Odessa now closed, some of Ukraine’s exports are making their way through the Constanta complex.
Train cars, with the “Cereale” stamped on their sides, spilled Ukrainian corn onto underground conveyor belts, sending billowing clouds of dust into the air at the terminal of US food giant Cargill last week. At a wharf operated by COFCO, the largest food and agricultural processor in China, grain was loaded onto a freighter from one of the huge silos that lined the docks. At COFCO’s entrance gate, trucks with Ukraine’s distinctive blue-and-yellow striped flag on their license plates waited for their grain shipments to be inspected before being unloaded.
During a visit to Kiev last week, Romanian President Klaus Iohannis said more than a million tons of Ukrainian grain had passed through Constanta to locations around the world since the invasion began.
But logistical problems prevent more grain from making the journey. Ukraine’s track gauges are wider than those elsewhere in Europe. Shipments must be transferred to Romanian trains at the border, or each railcar must be lifted from a Ukrainian undercarriage and wheels to one that can be used on Romanian tracks.
Freight traffic in Ukraine has been slowed by backups at border crossings – sometimes lasting days – along with gas shortages and damaged roads. According to the British Ministry of Defense, Russia has been targeting export routes.
Romania has its own transit problems. High-speed trains are rare and the country does not have an extensive highway system. Constanta and the surrounding infrastructure also suffer from decades of underinvestment.
In recent months, the Romanian government has invested money in cleaning up hundreds of rusted railcars and refurbishing tracks that had been abandoned when the communist regime fell in 1989.
Still, trucks entering and leaving the port from the highway must share a single-lane roadway. An attendant mans the gate, which must be lifted in front of each vehicle.
If the bulk of the Romanian harvest arrives at the terminals in the coming weeks, the congestion will increase significantly. 3,000 to 5,000 trucks will arrive every day, causing miles of traffic jams on the highway leading to Constanta, said Cristian Taranu, terminal general manager of Romanian port operator Umex.
The farm of mr. Mircea is less than a 30-minute drive from Constanta. But “during the busiest times, my trucks wait two, three days” just to enter the port complex so they can unload, he said through a translator.
That is one of the reasons why he is less optimistic than Mr Corbea about Romania’s ability to take advantage of agricultural and export opportunities.
“Port Constanta is not prepared for such an opportunity,” said Mr Mircea. “They don’t have the infrastructure.”
