AgriMin: Nothing to fear from prospect of food crisis, in Romania we can talk about food waste

Minister of Agriculture Adrian Chesnoiu declared on Friday, in western Timisoara, that in Romania we have nothing to fear about the prospect of a food crisis, and in our country we can talk instead about food waste, given that last year more than 2 million tonnes of food were thrown away, Agerpres reports.

The minister also said that in order to prevent food waste, he recommends that citizens go shopping after eating at home, so as not to crave too many products in stores.

On a separate note, the Minister of Agriculture reiterated that agricultural raw materials must be processed in Romania in order to add value and only then exported as foodstuffs, but for this to happen, farmers and producers must also be assisted by the state.

"Romania produces in a good agricultural year, as it was last year, 3 million tonnes of sunflower seeds. Our consumption needs for refined oil are met by 1,200,000 tonnes. On the global market we see that the need for sunflower oil is increasingly higher, Indonesia has made the decision to stop exporting palm oil, so the need for sunflower oil is expected to rise. It is clear that such a solution in an open market that Romanian processors of sunflower oil can also gain must come including through incentives from the state and all the programs that we elaborate at the level of the Ministry of Agriculture are developed together with the farmers, with the processors, with the beneficiaries of our study programs," said minister Chesnoiu.

"The new harvest will begin on August 1 - in time, through the continuity of this program, we would like to process some of the approximately 7,000,000 tonnes of wheat and 1,200,000 tonnes of sunflower seeds in Romania," the Minister of Agriculture went on to say.