The Agricultural Cooperatives in Romania. Evolution after 1990

The Romanian agricultural sector is characterised by a large number of small farms, technically insufficiently equipped, with insufficient number of staff, low qualified and having a high average age. A solution for making these small farms more efficient is to combine plots of land, associating in a form of producers being also one of the pertinent solutions. The paper proposes an analysis on the evolution of the phenomenon of agricultural producer's association in Romania, after the change of the 1990 political regime, with emphasis on agricultural cooperatives. The data on the association of producers in the form of agricultural cooperatives were collected from national statistics and relevant organisations. The information found is relatively scarce, it is necessary to complete the bibliographic resources with media information from the literature. During the analysed period the tradition of agricultural cooperatives, successful associations in the interwar period, was re-established. If in 2004-2005 the phenomenon was at its inception, by the middle of 2018 there were over 1000 agricultural cooperatives in Romania, and three associations were established in the field. Although the figures for the establishment of cooperatives in the last years indicate a spectacular growth, the small number of employees or the lack of economic activity show that small Romanian farmers are not yet ready for this form of organisation. On the national level, additional information and financial support measures are needed for the establishment of agricultural cooperatives, which can be a solution for the small agricultural producers in Romania.