WATER POLITICS

The 191 kilometer-long canal linking the Siret river in Romania to the country’s rich, fertile Baragan plain never caught the imagination of former dictator Nicolae Ceausescu. The project only finally got going in 1986, three years before his demise, and then halted after the fall of communism.

Now with a price tag the government puts at €5.5 billion ($6.1 billion), the irrigation channel is part of a mission to rescue crops and protect an agricultural industry that’s critical to the economy and to Europe’s supply chain.

Romania, one of the continent’s biggest exporters of corn, is among the countries battling to counter climate change that is wreaking havoc on farming. In recent weeks alone, images of parched land from searing summer heat turned into those of deadly floods across the region.

Along with neighboring Bulgaria, the country is more dependent on farming than anywhere else in the European Union. Romania accounts for about a third of all the farms in the EU, with about 23% of the workforce employed in agriculture. The industry racked up losses of €2 billion already this year.

Climate experts say it’s just the beginning. Europe is the fastest warming continent and will be more exposed to extreme weather, with farmers on the front line. Meanwhile, the EU is struggling to adapt its policies and funding to the new reality. The bloc already spends a quarter of its budget on subsidizing agriculture, and had to pledge another €10 billion in aid for its eastern members hit by flooding last month.

“At some point, we will inevitably have to have relatively radical change in our farming systems driven by wildfires and drought and floods and lack of a water in the summer,” said Tim Benton, a distinguished fellow at Chatham House in London specializing in food security.

Total EU grain production in 2024 is set to fall by at least 7% below the five-year average as Romania’s drought combined with relentless rain in France and Germany.

For many Romanian farmers, it’s the fourth consecutive year of ravaged corn and sunflower fields. Petrica Andrei stopped planting corn on his 1,000-hectare farm in the south of Romania four years ago because of the losses he faced after extensive periods of drought.

The region where he lives is nicknamed the Sahara of Romania and is losing land the size of his farm to desertification every year, according to Environment Ministry data. Irrigation channels from the Danube River were neglected over the decades and no longer work. The government is now focusing on reforestation to slow down the process.

Getting Water From Romania’s Siret River to the Baragan Plain

The 191-kilometer (119-mile) canal would run from Calimanesti dam to Lake Dridu

“At this moment, we’re completely weather dependent because we cannot irrigate anything and the risks we take every year are huge,” Andrei said.

In response, the country is dusting off large irrigation and water dam projects, many of which were abandoned after the collapse of communism three decades ago. The Siret-Baragan channel could play an important role in both ensuring irrigation water for thousands of hectares of land in one of the driest, yet fertile places in the country.

About 2,000 people were working on the canal in 1990, the year following the end of the Ceausescu regime. When work finally stopped in 1994, about 11 kilometers (6.8 miles) of the canal had been built.

After some restoration, a pumping station was salvaged from mud and in 2018 a stretch of about 5 kilometers became operational. It’s used to irrigate about 7,000 hectares of arable land.

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Funding has been the main issue, and there are still plenty of skeptics that say the government’s promise to finally complete the canal is a gimmick in an election year. Successive administrations allocated money to keep it alive and tried to attract investments from China, the US or Middle East. Romanian government officials were in the US last month drumming up interest in investing in irrigation.

Works on a 33-kilometer section was expected to start in September, but were delayed because of the complexities of contracting companies to execute the project, according to Agriculture Minister Florin Barbu.

It’s now on track to start in the first quarter of 2025, he said in an emailed response to questions, and remains a “strategic priority” for Romania that will protect areas from drought, he said.

Part of the issue is also competition for resources, said Mircea Fechet, the environment minister. There needs to be an integrated policy to tackle water shortages because of record drought this year, he said.

“Everyone was asking for more water but there just wasn’t enough, so we need to prioritize citizens of course,” Fechet said in an interview. “But we cannot disregard farmers either because they need to ensure our food security so it’s hard not to be on their side too.”

Overall, Romania aims to have irrigation facilities for about 2.2 million hectares, some funded by the EU, compared with 1.6 million hectares currently. That’s still just a quarter of the nation’s total arable land.

Lawmakers in the European Parliament recently urged the commission to come up with new measures to support investment and adapt the Common Agricultural Policy. France, for example, is poised to have the lowest wheat harvest in decades because of too much rain.

“The recent floods and droughts remind us that our farmers stand on the front lines of climate change and they cannot stand alone,” said Janusz Wojciechowski, the EU’s outgoing Agriculture Commissioner.

In the meantime, Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu’s government, which is already struggling to contain the widest budget deficit in the EU, is reticent to fund such large investments.

So, some regions are looking at other, more novel ways of making sure crops get enough water. Constantin Toma, the mayor of the southern town of Buzau, traveled to the US and Israel to look at options. He is now preparing a trial project, a first for Romania, to use reclaimed water from the town’s sewage systems to irrigate agricultural land.

“There simply isn’t enough water anymore,” Toma said in an interview in August. He plans to have the system up and running in two years. “Even if these channels do get finalized, the river flows are very low during the summer months, so we need ways to store water and use it as efficiently as possible through the entire year.”

For farmer Andrei, a smaller-scale dam on the Vedea river in southern Romania could help him irrigate about a quarter of his land. That would convince him to resume corn planting, he said.

And irrigation does make a difference, according to fellow farmer Nina Gheorghita. The agricultural engineer hopes to make a small profit from this year’s crops, as she irrigates 80% of her 700-hectare farm in Braila county close to the Danube. She planted wheat, corn and some sunflowers.

“I’m among the farmers who learned from past mistakes and learned now to adapt to the climate,” she said. “But the fundamental issue for all of us remains the lack of irrigation options. We need an irrigation master plan with key investment objectives that doesn’t change every time a minister changes.”