Jim McCarthy has been a well-known name in the Irish tillage sector. He moved to head up a farming investment in Argentina in the 2000s and subsequently moved to farm in Romania. The business there, called Southern Harvest Romania (SHR), commenced in 2014 and is now farming about 9,600ha. Jim said that the farm is continuously acquiring land, both for rent and purchase, and there is a team of people employed whose sole job is to access more land.
The business is driven by fund investment and Jim said that this trend is significant in global agriculture. He told us that the main reason they came to farm in Botosani county in northeast Romania was because it has summer rainfall. This county is about twice the size of Kildare and it is a very rolling countryside where the good land is found on the tops of the hills rather than in the valleys.
The business currently crops 9,600ha with 4,000ha rented in and almost 3,000ha rented out. Jim said that they have about 11,000 separate pieces of land owned or rented, averaging about 1.25ha each. The cropped fields vary in size from 2ha to 205ha.
Much of the heavy machinery that operates on the land is fitted with tracks.
A number of farms
The farm business comprises five different companies that were purchased since 2014. One of these is a 1,702ha organic farm growing a range of crops with the bulk of the produce sold to the German market. The organic area comprises of wheat (280ha), maize (172ha), sunflower (229ha), sugar beet (70ha), oats (12ha), lucerne (90ha), buck wheat (38ha), pumpkin (109ha), peas (143ha), linseed (225ha) and soya beans (334ha). This farm uses highly sophisticated and precision-controlled equipment for crop husbandry.
The conventional farms comprise the bulk of the land area and these currently grow wheat (1,863ha), soya beans (622ha), sugar beet (545ha), sunflower (1,673ha) and grain maize (3,105ha). He said that they hope to halve the area sown to sunflowers going forward, mainly because of the difficulties in controlling volunteers in following crops.
This is the first year to grow sugar beet so it is a pretty significant trial area. Jim said that the crop has significant potential to be profitable and harvesting and transport is organized by the processor.
Rotation is important but matching the crop to the land is even more important Jim said. The different farms have different rainfall levels and this also influences crop choices on the different farms.
One of a number of big CASE combines operating on the SHR farms.
Rainfall and drought
Most of the machinery used is pooled and used across all farms, except for the organic unit which is self-sufficient. Jim described the land as very heavy and it was certainly very sticky during the rain we encountered on our visit. One of the farms recorded over 200mm in just three days during our visit in late June and Jim since told me that rain has continued to cause great difficulty for harvesting.
The combination of significant heat and summer rainfall means that the season happens very fast in that part of the world. While the spring was very dry this year, a maize crop can go from emergence to tasselling in as little as six weeks. But a lack of rainfall can be very serious too. The mid-summer rain is seen as being hugely beneficial for maize and soya beans and will help autumn planting.
Quad-tracks are the main workhorse but most of these are purchased secondhand from the UK because they represent better value, even though machinery is cheaper in Romania. Tracks are important and they have certainly helped the combine fleet during the difficult harvest. The spread of crops means that combines do about 1,000 engine hours per year and they work 24/7 during harvest.
Still expanding
While the company has already invested a significant amount of money in the business in Romania, Jim said that the objective is to grow further and continue to invest. The average cost of land in this region is put at around €3,000/ha but purchasing or renting is somewhat complex.
Land ownership in Romania was granted before the maps were drawn up and so it is common to find discrepancies on existing titles. So purchase requires a team of specialised legal people to ensure that everything is in order before a purchase is concluded.
The fact that land is owned in strips explains why a small strip may still exist in the middle of a big area of a single crop – the owner would not sell or lease. So having good relationships with one’s neighbours is important and it is also important for big businesses to be seen to be actively helping local communities in some way, even if it is done quietly.
The process of talking to owners of adjoining or new lands or farms, with the intention of expansion, is referred to as ‘compacting’ and it is an ongoing process. The team that buy and rent the land are also responsible for compacting. When they have plots above 2ha they hand them over to the farming team.
Soil fertility
Low soil pH and low soil P are major limitations to productivity. Jim is targeting a pH level of 6.2 and spread about 7,000t of lime this year alone. The bulk of the lime available is some form of processed lime waste rather than ground limestone.
Phosphate use is high also and he is applying about 60kgP/ha across the farms to try and rise soil levels. He is now soil sampling on a 2ha grid basis to help add precision to input use. But there seem to be very few sources of ground limestone in the country.
Security
Most farmers further south reported that theft was not an issue but Jim stated: “It’s a problem for us.”
Claudiu Cojucaru is security manager at SHR and he explained some of the challenges. The problems mainly result from the communist era where state support meant that people feel entitled to take and probably do not see it as stealing.
Theft is not really about big items like tractors or other items of great value. It is much more basic and mundane. Diesel is very much a local currency so all tanks and tractors are locked and heavily monitored for fuel use. But thieves developed highly sophisticated systems to overcome the security.
Theft of cobs from maize crops is a serious issue too. This is not a matter of a few cobs for the table but rather caruta loads to feed a pig or other animals over winter. When this is done by hundreds of individuals it amounts to quite a lot of missing grain.
The business uses CCTV, electronic number plate recognition, GPS trackers on vehicles, motion detection cameras, electronic fuel control plus keys, manual recording registers to provide a check on electronic registers and frequent vehicle patrols.
Claudiu said that they use a combination of enforcement and education to help tackle the problem. He sees more use for drones as part of the deterrent and they will aim to monitor transport vehicles that carry high value crops. He is even hoping to be able to use intrusion sensors in individual fields.
Jim said that they are considering an open farm day for the local community to help build an understanding of the business. It is important to have locals on your side and tradition is still a driver of current practices.
Snippets
Farm labour costs around €1,000/month but this only equates to about €500 in take-home pay as taxes are very high because so many Romanians work outside the country.
Farms in Romania get area aid and Jim said that the rate applicable to his land is about €170/ha. He also confirmed the presence of many other coupled payments that apply to specific crops like protein. Another farmer told us that he can get an additional €800/ha subsidy for sugar beet if his root yield exceeds around 55t/ha.
All the farm vehicles had registration plates with the letters SHR, which stands for the company name.
In summary
Security is an issue for some farmers in Romania but not for all.Most land is fundamentally low in pH and phosphorous. ‘Compacting’ is a term used for gaining access to adjoining strips of land.Having a broad range of crops with varied planting and harvesting dates helps to get more work out of individual machines.
Jim McCarthy has been a well-known name in the Irish tillage sector. He moved to head up a farming investment in Argentina in the 2000s and subsequently moved to farm in Romania. The business there, called Southern Harvest Romania (SHR), commenced in 2014 and is now farming about 9,600ha. Jim said that the farm is continuously acquiring land, both for rent and purchase, and there is a team of people employed whose sole job is to access more land.
The business is driven by fund investment and Jim said that this trend is significant in global agriculture. He told us that the main reason they came to farm in Botosani county in northeast Romania was because it has summer rainfall. This county is about twice the size of Kildare and it is a very rolling countryside where the good land is found on the tops of the hills rather than in the valleys.
The business currently crops 9,600ha with 4,000ha rented in and almost 3,000ha rented out. Jim said that they have about 11,000 separate pieces of land owned or rented, averaging about 1.25ha each. The cropped fields vary in size from 2ha to 205ha.
Much of the heavy machinery that operates on the land is fitted with tracks.
A number of farms
The farm business comprises five different companies that were purchased since 2014. One of these is a 1,702ha organic farm growing a range of crops with the bulk of the produce sold to the German market. The organic area comprises of wheat (280ha), maize (172ha), sunflower (229ha), sugar beet (70ha), oats (12ha), lucerne (90ha), buck wheat (38ha), pumpkin (109ha), peas (143ha), linseed (225ha) and soya beans (334ha). This farm uses highly sophisticated and precision-controlled equipment for crop husbandry.
The conventional farms comprise the bulk of the land area and these currently grow wheat (1,863ha), soya beans (622ha), sugar beet (545ha), sunflower (1,673ha) and grain maize (3,105ha). He said that they hope to halve the area sown to sunflowers going forward, mainly because of the difficulties in controlling volunteers in following crops.
This is the first year to grow sugar beet so it is a pretty significant trial area. Jim said that the crop has significant potential to be profitable and harvesting and transport is organized by the processor.
Rotation is important but matching the crop to the land is even more important Jim said. The different farms have different rainfall levels and this also influences crop choices on the different farms.
One of a number of big CASE combines operating on the SHR farms.
Rainfall and drought
Most of the machinery used is pooled and used across all farms, except for the organic unit which is self-sufficient. Jim described the land as very heavy and it was certainly very sticky during the rain we encountered on our visit. One of the farms recorded over 200mm in just three days during our visit in late June and Jim since told me that rain has continued to cause great difficulty for harvesting.
The combination of significant heat and summer rainfall means that the season happens very fast in that part of the world. While the spring was very dry this year, a maize crop can go from emergence to tasselling in as little as six weeks. But a lack of rainfall can be very serious too. The mid-summer rain is seen as being hugely beneficial for maize and soya beans and will help autumn planting.
Quad-tracks are the main workhorse but most of these are purchased secondhand from the UK because they represent better value, even though machinery is cheaper in Romania. Tracks are important and they have certainly helped the combine fleet during the difficult harvest. The spread of crops means that combines do about 1,000 engine hours per year and they work 24/7 during harvest.
Still expanding
While the company has already invested a significant amount of money in the business in Romania, Jim said that the objective is to grow further and continue to invest. The average cost of land in this region is put at around €3,000/ha but purchasing or renting is somewhat complex.
Land ownership in Romania was granted before the maps were drawn up and so it is common to find discrepancies on existing titles. So purchase requires a team of specialised legal people to ensure that everything is in order before a purchase is concluded.
The fact that land is owned in strips explains why a small strip may still exist in the middle of a big area of a single crop – the owner would not sell or lease. So having good relationships with one’s neighbours is important and it is also important for big businesses to be seen to be actively helping local communities in some way, even if it is done quietly.
The process of talking to owners of adjoining or new lands or farms, with the intention of expansion, is referred to as ‘compacting’ and it is an ongoing process. The team that buy and rent the land are also responsible for compacting. When they have plots above 2ha they hand them over to the farming team.
Soil fertility
Low soil pH and low soil P are major limitations to productivity. Jim is targeting a pH level of 6.2 and spread about 7,000t of lime this year alone. The bulk of the lime available is some form of processed lime waste rather than ground limestone.
Phosphate use is high also and he is applying about 60kgP/ha across the farms to try and rise soil levels. He is now soil sampling on a 2ha grid basis to help add precision to input use. But there seem to be very few sources of ground limestone in the country.
Security
Most farmers further south reported that theft was not an issue but Jim stated: “It’s a problem for us.”
Claudiu Cojucaru is security manager at SHR and he explained some of the challenges. The problems mainly result from the communist era where state support meant that people feel entitled to take and probably do not see it as stealing.
Theft is not really about big items like tractors or other items of great value. It is much more basic and mundane. Diesel is very much a local currency so all tanks and tractors are locked and heavily monitored for fuel use. But thieves developed highly sophisticated systems to overcome the security.
Theft of cobs from maize crops is a serious issue too. This is not a matter of a few cobs for the table but rather caruta loads to feed a pig or other animals over winter. When this is done by hundreds of individuals it amounts to quite a lot of missing grain.
The business uses CCTV, electronic number plate recognition, GPS trackers on vehicles, motion detection cameras, electronic fuel control plus keys, manual recording registers to provide a check on electronic registers and frequent vehicle patrols.
Claudiu said that they use a combination of enforcement and education to help tackle the problem. He sees more use for drones as part of the deterrent and they will aim to monitor transport vehicles that carry high value crops. He is even hoping to be able to use intrusion sensors in individual fields.
Jim said that they are considering an open farm day for the local community to help build an understanding of the business. It is important to have locals on your side and tradition is still a driver of current practices.
Snippets
Farm labour costs around €1,000/month but this only equates to about €500 in take-home pay as taxes are very high because so many Romanians work outside the country.
Farms in Romania get area aid and Jim said that the rate applicable to his land is about €170/ha. He also confirmed the presence of many other coupled payments that apply to specific crops like protein. Another farmer told us that he can get an additional €800/ha subsidy for sugar beet if his root yield exceeds around 55t/ha.
All the farm vehicles had registration plates with the letters SHR, which stands for the company name.
In summary
Security is an issue for some farmers in Romania but not for all.Most land is fundamentally low in pH and phosphorous. ‘Compacting’ is a term used for gaining access to adjoining strips of land.Having a broad range of crops with varied planting and harvesting dates helps to get more work out of individual machines. 
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