Estudio de costo beneficio

MU 1997 1998 1999 2000 2005 2006

Cereals - total

Cultivated area thou ha 6,319.8 5,920.6 5,370.7 5,655.2 6,294.9 6,038.1 Total prod thou t 22,107.3 15452,7 17037,3 10477,5 18870,9 14356,5

Wheat + Rye

Cultivated area thou ha 2,424.4 2033,4 1686,9 1954,3 2496,7 2029,8 Aver prod kg/ha 2,964.0 2561,0 2776,0 2280,0 5336 4818 Total prod thou t 7,185.6 5207,9 4682,5 4456,2 7389,7 5561,9

Corn

Cultivated area thou ha 3037,7 3128,9 3013,4 3049,4 2628,5 2520,1 Aver prod kg/ha 4171,0 2756,0 3627,0 1603,0 3952 3565 Total prod tho t 12686,7 8623,4 10934,8 4897,6 10388,5 8984,7

Sun flower

Cultivated area thou ha 780,7 962,2 1043,0 876,8 971,0 991,4 Aver prod kg/ha 1095,0 1115,0 1243,0 821,0 1381 1540 Total prod thou t 858,1 1073,3 1300,9 720,9 1340,9 1526,2

Sugar beet

Cultivated area thou ha 128.8 117.8 65.5 48.4 25.2 39.8 Aver prod kg/ha 21,166 20045.0 21608,0 13,787 28,932 28,942 Total prod mii t 2,725.5 2361,4 1414,9 666.9 729.7 1,152.2

Potatoes

Cultivated area thou ha 255,0 261,3 273,7 282,7 284,9 278,0 Aver prod kg/ha 12531 12642 14434,0 12249,0 13078 14191 Total prod thou t 3206,4 3319.0 3957,1 3469,8 3738,6 4015,9

Source:Annual Statistic Catalogues of Romania years: 1997- 2006

One of the direct consequence of the decrease of the cereals production was the diminish of the animal breeding and meat production sectors during in the same period, as seen in the Table 5, which resulted in the increase of the meat and meat products import. Nevertheless, not only the lacks of irrigations lead to the decrease of the vegetal productions. Several factors such as the high costs of the agriculture inputs (fertilizers, fuel, etc), liquidation of the large slaughter units and meat processing such as the one in Timisoara, legislative problems, retrocession of the agriculture lands, after 1990, to the former owners as well as financial and economic factors determined these drastic decreases in the vegetal and animal sectors.

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Table 5Evolution of the animal effectives and production 1997-2006

Specification UM 1997 1998 1999 2000 2005 2006

Cattle total thou heads 3.43 3.23 3.14 3.05 2.87 2.42 Cattle meat production thou t 421 371 364 362 357 318 Milk production thou hl 52.58 50.90 49.24 48.51 50.03 48.01

Swine total thou heads 8.23 7.09 7.19 5.84 4.79 4.25 Swine meat production thou t 820 825 687 600 579 498 Sheep total thou

heads 9.66 8.93 8.40 8.12 7.65 7.20

Sheep meat production

thou t

138 130 120 119 112 120

Source:Annual statistics catalogues of Romania years: 1997 - 2006

Among the reasons which lead to drastic reducing of the irrigated surfaces we mention the following:

• Liquidation and dissolving of the large size agriculture production units, former agriculture cooperatives, at the beginning as result of application the Law no. 18/1993 regarding the Land Fund and later on Law no. 1/2000, regarding the Land Restitution, both implemented incoherently and even chaotically;

• Damage of the infrastructure of the hydro-ameliorative equipment existing at that time, by destruction, stealing, physical and moral outdated, abandon, lack of interest from the new (agricultural) land owners. All these effects occurred on the background of incapacity of the decisional factors to administrate, organize and operate an important patrimony of the agriculture and of the national economy at the same time;

• The mismanagement of the agriculture resources and the surfaces covered with forage crops lead to an unbalance between the vegetal and animal production;

• Constant increase of the tariffs for the irrigation water and mainly the differentiation on pumping speeds also contributed significantly to the diminish of the agriculture land owners to purchase rehabilitate the irrigation systems;

• Constant destruction of the electric power transport network existing, before 1990, along with dismantling of the network routes (stealing of the transformers) motivated by its malfunction;

• Failure to convince the land owners and poor of information regarding the economic advantages of the agriculture using the irrigation systems, despite of high costs, associated with the delayed establishment of the Associations and Organizations of

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Water for Irrigation, Emergency Ordinance of Government no. 174/1999 followed by Law no. 138/2004;

• Lack of equipment necessary to manage the water for plants irrigation;

• Lack of correlation of the rehabilitation works of the irrigation infrastructure with the real water demand at the hydro technical system level;

• Unsafe marketplace of the production for the vegetal responding better at irrigations, such as: corn or vegetables, having in view the highly permissive policies regarding the imports.

Regarding the irrigation infrastructure it includes two basic components:

f Water pumping system including basic pump substations, re-pumping substations, water pressure substations;

f Transport infrastructure including channels, piping and afferent construction works.

Also, the water source related to the irrigation facilities is provided from Danube River for 2,547,859 ha (85%), from interior rivers and lakes for 449,621 ha (15%).

At present the National Administration for Land Arrangements has in administration 296 of complex irrigation facilities while the irrigation systems in the private sector are much to poor represented.

In terms of the existing infrastructure for irrigation facilities it includes: - Water supply and distribution: 10,975 km;

- Underground piping network: 28,773 km;

- Floating and fix pumping stations as well as hydro technical structures: 2,908 pieces.

They also include: gates, automate hydraulic valves, small bridges, lateral spillways falls. The installed power of the pumping stations is at present of 4,134 MW.

However, only one fifth of the pumping stations are presently in operation which deepens even more the actual irrigation crisis. One of the consequences of drastic diminishing of the irrigated surface was the drastic decrease of the agriculture production in overall, mainly of the cereal grains as well as in vegetal sector with direct negative results on the rest of the agricultural sectors and on the food production sectors as seen in Tables 4 and 5.

As we previously mentioned most of the irrigation systems operating before 1990 were destroyed. Therefore the ones damaged cannot be considered as operational but their existing infrastructure, channels, remained piping systems, can represent a logistic support to reconsider new possibilities so that to be able to provide the necessary water to achieve efficient vegetal and cereal productions.

Thus, our proposal, through the hereinafter study, regards the implementation in the agriculture sector of the integrate wind turbines irrigation systems which should use renewable clean energy, i.e. wind power, to operate irrigation installations on medium and large agriculture surfaces. These irrigation systems could be either connected to the existing wind farms, in the vicinity of agriculture lands, or specially constructed for certain surfaces needed to be irrigated.

During the last 10 years the specialists and the investors begun to give more and more attention to renewable energy sources, such as wind power, solar energy, bio fuels, etc) which should gradually replace the classic fuel resources (coal, oil) which polluting emission generators.

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However, in Europe and worldwide this type of energy is already over two decades used. Recently in Romania the investments in wind power turbines begun to be implemented and financially supported by the Government and the European funds granted to Romania starting with 2000, as a condition of joining the European Union structures. For example, the target provided for Romania in the Directive 2009/28/CE is 24% production of renewable energy out of the total national gross power production. Among the renewable power sources the wind power has a significant weight. Thus, according to the last Report of the National Authority for Energy Regulation (on 2011), in 2010 35.24% of the electric energy production was achieved from renewable and out of this percent 22% was produced by the existing wind turbines existing in Romania. Presently, the wind turbines, so called wind farms, which generate renewable electric power, are located mainly in plain areas in South, South East, West and North regions of Romania, see Picture 2, where the average wind speed of 4.5% m/s allows the efficient operation of wind turbines.

The present paper proposes the implementation of some innovative systems, called by us integrate irrigation systems, connected to the already existing wind turbines which will produce electric power to be delivered to the National Energy System and to ensure, at the same time, the power necessary to the operation of the irrigation systems whose aspersion pumps and pumping systems could be integrate within these wind turbines. Depending on the distance where the agriculture lands, necessary to be irrigated, are located these systems can ensure the transport of the water from the irrigation channels or rivers as well as water pumping to the sprinkler systems and their efficient operation.