Small scale agriculture as a resilient system in rural Romania

A brief overview of rural Romanian phenomena and processes in modern history reveals that rural areas and small rural households were highly stable systems, providing social and economic security. In all history, except during the communist period, small-scale agriculture was and continues to be the main provider of jobs in the rural labour market in the absence of other non-agricultural employment opportunities. In all times, consumption of self-produced food, supported by small farms, has had a leverage effect against poverty. More than that, the statistical information shows that small farms achieve higher levels of economic performance compared to large farms by diversifying their production structure and, through that, they make an important contribution to national food security. In the post-communist period (i.e. after 1989) in Romania, these functions and roles of the small farms have been restored and are widely recognised. If the meaning of ‘socio-economic resilience’ is the ability of an individual, of a household, community, region or country to resist, to adapt and to recover quickly after a crisis, shock or change, the economic and social functions and roles assumed in the transition period by small Romanian rural farms give them the attributes of a resilient answer of the entire Romania to the post-communist changes and shocks.