Many of the fields used for agriculture have been deserted. And the farmers who venture to work it are even fewer. Those who do, are struggling with ancient technologies, but they do not have a choice. It is the only way they can afford a piece of bread.
Mrs Ilinca is 77 years old. Exhausted and tired, the old woman can barley carry her hoe. There she’s got 10 acres of vineyard. On the way to her land plot, she is running the inventory.
‘Such fine vineyards there used to be here! Chasselas vines and others… Now, nobody has worked on it. When they gave out the vineyards, when the CAP shared it, everybody came and cared for it. Others have died and left it fallow. But who else would grow it again (the vineyard), since this village is doing so bad? Who, I wonder?, the old woman said.
It is hard to say in a country where the lack of money and the luring of going abroad have managed to quench the thirst to land ownership. The old woman would not give up. She’s got fine breeds of vineyards and the wine she makes sale well. Four lei a liter. She manages to gather some money in this way.
‘If you do not add water and sugar, you only get 60-80 decaliters of wine, if you add in water and sugar, you get 100. But I do not add that, I do not…No, no. Natural, natural, do you know how the beads sprinkle? ’ Ms. Ilina says smiling.
She is not complaining about the labour or the food. A hardworking person would never starve to death. The plot he has worked hard on will nourish him: ‘I go one week to the vineyard , one week I work in the garden, I weed that out too. I have planted water melons too. I have good food. I do not need anything. Good health and a kind death from God’.
She won’t even think of selling the land, even if she barely has any heirs. Dominica Bulgaru also works in the vineyard. Her body had a lot to suffer from the disease, but even so, she has never given up. Up on the hill, there are only 2-3 peasants working the land..
‘From the hill up, on the other site it is all left fallow, up there it is also fallow. Why, is that? Why isn’t anybody working the land? People have grown lazy, the young seeks social welfare, they gather the trash, there goes the month and they collect the money’, Domica Bulgaru explains.
With the few money from social welfare, the young crowd in the pub. Every day they talk politics while having a bear and eating sunflower seeds. And they feel sorry for themselves. None of them would take the hoe from Mrs. Ilinca’s back. She is waiting for a miracle though.
They do have land to work on. In Romania, a country with fertile soils and crops that could feed the whole of Europe, over 500 hectares of farmland have fallen prey to weeds. Instead of wheat, thistles grow
Their owners either died or fled in the world. They had neither money nor technology to work the land . And the thought that they will remain for a lifetime at the weather’s mercy deprived of any willpower. Especially since last year, a drought year, they have lost almost everything.
But the state is seeking solutions. The wasted land incurs annual losses to the state budget. Money, for example, that could be used for investments and irrigation systems. Maybe in this way we could produce better and more. Until then, Romania sits and dreams of the record crops of 25 years ago.
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