CEREAL PRODUCTION STABILITY IN TERRITORIAL PROFILE

Romania’s agricultural production has been fluctuating, the instability being mainly generated by the climate factors and the production technologies, deficient in counteracting the effects of climate factors. In Romania, cereals are the most widely grown crop, the average of the last 25 years showing that over 65% of total arable area has been cultivated with cereals. Romania’s total cereal production largely depends on the weather conditions, featuring strong instability at national level, with variations from year to year, under the background of changes in the cultivated areas and average yields; in this paper we investigate the variation of these factors, i.e. areas and productivity, which determine production stability. Cereals have a significant share in both animal and human consumption, and in these conditions the research on cereal production stability is important because a stable production can meet the domestic consumption needs, attenuating price volatility. In order to study how the agricultural production values for wheat and maize are dispersed, in the paper we used the production variation coefficient at county level. Calculating the variability for the average wheat and grain maize yields per hectare, in territorial profile, we could notice that the counties with the greatest productions also have the greatest variations.