Articles
THE PROBLEMS OF VEGETABLE STORAGE IN THE FARMS OF SUB-CARPATHIA
The state program till 1995 estimates at privatizing 20 million ha (about 50 % of the agricultural area). In respect of Sub-Carpathia where 1/3 of the agricultural area has already been privately owned the proportion of large-scale growing will go on decreasing, especially in fields such as horticultural growing that are especially labour-intensive.
This problem will raise the question of the effective utilization of vegetable storing capacity.
The large-scale collective farms and state farms of Sub-Carpathia were transformed into agricultural enterprises, co-operatives, and share companies.
The storage capacity of horticultural products: artificial mechanical cooling 25 buildings for 30.000 tons of goods, roofed storaging 40 buildings for 45.000 tons of goods.
The production of large-scale horticultural products during the last two years was about 80.000 tons, of them 30.000 tons were vegetables. 60–65.000 of the whole went for fresh realization, from it vegetables were 25.000 tons.
The fruit-growing of the small-scale farms was likely to be about 50.000 tons and the vegetable growing about 60.000 tons.
Most of it went for their own fresh consumption and for fresh market realization.
The conclusion that we can reach from these data taking into consideration the 10–12.000 tons of horticultural products per year that was worked out in the subsidiary enterprises of the large-scale farms, the utilization of the cooling capacity of cool-houses was not more than 15–20 %.
At present there are 329.000 household farms and 389.000 private farms registered in Sub-Carpathia. 1627 peasants got the allocation but 138 of them have not been registered yet.
The land owned by household farms is 86.000 ha (58.000 of it is plough-land) the average size of a farm is 0.26 ha.
Of the registered 389 farms (altogether 2025 ha); 172 of them have 11–20 ha, and only 9 of them have more than 20 ha.
Taking into consideration that only 104 of them have mechanical pulling power, they are likely to specialize on corn and industrial plants, but most of the household farms are going to specialize in the production of horticultural products over animal keeping and this specialization will be even stronger in the future.
At the same time the lack of processing capacity and that of storage facilities confine the efficient production of fruits and vegetables on the small-scale farms.
The small-scale producers have to face the practically unsolvable task of fresh realization, because of the lingering fuel-shortage it is not possible to carry goods to the markets outside the Sub-Carpathia.
In connection with the cold storage capacity of large-scale farms we have to take into consideration the following: