The Romanian vegetable sector continues to face declining competitiveness, with imports dominating supermarket shelves and market stalls, FreshPlaza informs.
Carrots from the Netherlands, garlic from Hungary, celery from Poland, and apples from Italy are common, while local produce struggles to compete.
Official figures show that in the first five months of the year, Romania imported nearly five times more vegetables and fruit than it exported, amounting to around US$2.16 billion (€2 billion). Gheorghe Vlad, president of the Fruit and Vegetable Growers Association, said: “Today, over 80% of fruit and vegetable consumption comes from imports. If nothing changes, in a few years we will reach 100%. Romanian potatoes and onions have become almost non-existent. We have only around 20,000 ha with table potatoes; it should have been 250,000 ha instead.”
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The processing industry also relies heavily on imports. Romania brings in tens of thousands of tons of tomato paste from China each year, while local production covers only a fraction of factory demand. Vlad noted: “We import 60,000 tons of tomato paste from China (…); we can’t find a single tomato seed in it. We don’t even produce 5% of what the canning factories need.”
Small farmers are directly impacted. Sorin Cristea, who grows vegetables on 8,000 square meters in Giurgiu County, reduced his production area by almost 40%. “One of our complaints is imports, which come from abroad and prevent us from selling our products. We produce less because if we produce a lot, we can’t sell what we produce,” he said.
Farmers also point to limited subsidies and the absence of strong cooperatives, which leaves them vulnerable to pressure from large retail chains. Buyers often prefer imported goods, which are visually uniform and sometimes cheaper. Farmers argue that customers often choose based on appearance, while taste and freshness are secondary factors.
Despite harvesting more than one million tons of vegetables in 2024, Romania ranked only 11th in the European Union. Spain, Italy, France, and Poland together accounted for almost two-thirds of EU production, according to G4Food.
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