The Romanian Agri-food Sector – Supplier and Client of National Economy

AbstractStarting from Romania‟s generous land endowment (per capita), from the still very high demographic rurality, the present paper presents a dynamic, multicriterial analysis of the aggregate efficiency in utilizing the three essential available resources (land, labour and capital) in order to generate sectoral productivity gains that would finally result in the relative diminution of social costs of food. At the end of the period 1989 – 2011, the annual net investment in agriculture was about 6 times lower and fixed capitalization about 4 times higher compared to 1989. In the same period, GVA in agriculture experienced a strong relative decline as share in national economy (from 23.7% (1990) to 6.4% (2010)); however, agriculture maintained its “social buffer” role throughout the investigated period, as this sector still uses a large labour input, yet poorly remunerated and with a deficient endowment in production factors that could contribute to increased yields. Using data from the national accounts, the input- output tables and the Chennery - Watanabe and Rasmussen method, it resulted that the Romanian agri-food sector simultaneously presents a double hypostasis: client, through backward linkages and supplier, through forward linkages for the remaining branches, their cumulative economic driving effects (upstream + downstream) being about 4.8 monetary units and 4.7 monetary units respectively