KNOWLEDGE BASE

Mapping Report on Challenges - Romania

This document aims to present the main social challenges identified in Romanian rural areas, as well as to describe their causes, inter-connections, impacts upon the mental, physical and social wellbeing of individual farmers and farming households and the identified approaches used by individual farmers and farming households to deal with the negatives impacts of these social challenges. This map is part of a larger Horizon 2020 Thematic Newtork entitled ‘FARMWELL’ that aims at mapping social innovations in farming and making these social innovations more accessible for farmers and the larger community, with the prime purpose of improving the overall wellbeing of individual farmers, farming households and the larger rural community.With this purpose in mind, six European countries (Belgium, Greece, Romania, Poland, Italy and Hungary) have mapped the main social challenges they are being confronted with. Based on this mapping, a set of social challenges has been selected for deeper elaboration and analysis. In addition, a set of social innovations has been mapped that aims at improving the wellbeing of individual farmers, farming households and rural communities. Regarding the Romania study case, the main social challenges identified were:
  • Rural poverty – poverty in Romania is not only an individual or family phenomenon, but it is also geographical and tends to be concentrated in “marginalized rural areas” within which the poverty is ‘transmitted’ from one generation to another – it therefore tends to be highly persistent and very challenging to address. 
  • Loss of identity and erosion of social status – the ongoing transition to harmonize rural areas with the EU framework, has seriously eroded the fibber of rural communities.
  • Poor access to education and lifelong learning.
  • Low household income level.
  • Out migration – especially parental migration in rural areas. 
  • Health and nutrition – present a series of problems, in relation to both hygiene and food quality, and the permanent access to medical services.
  • Impoverishment – high poverty levels are associated with unemployment, low education attainment, high intergenerational transmission of poverty and regional disparities.