COMPARATIVE STUDY ON THE LEVEL OF PRODUCTION COSTS IN ORGANIC AND CONVENTIONAL AGRICULTURE IN ROMANIA.

The concept of sustainable development appeared in the attempt to reconcile agri-food production with measures to conserve non-renewable resources, but also the attempt to protect the environment, and in this process the farmer has an important role given the effects that specific activities have so much on the environment. Because of this, more and more actors involved in this process, from farmers to consumers, but also politicians have begun to pay more attention to organic farming, as an advantageous means of reconciliation between man and nature. In this paper we aim to analyze the production costs recorded in six crops, both in the case of applying the conventional production system and in the case of applying the ecological system in Romania, in order to determine the profitability of those crops. The research methodology involved the use of existing data in domestic and international databases, but also data collected through the project ADER 23.1.1. Technical and economic substantiation of the production costs and estimates regarding the capitalization prices of the main vegetal and animal products, obtained in conventional system and in ecological agriculture, data that were processed, analyzed and which formed the basis for formulating conclusions. The conclusion was that sugar beet and sunflower are profitable crops both in the conventional and organic system, while rape, soybean, rice and hemp registered losses which have to be covered by subsidies. Income depends on production performance and selling price, in the both systems, and case of organic products is inversely proportional. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]