agreste

Agreste cahiers n° 37 - mars 1999

For central and eastern European countries desirous of joining a European Union which devotes half of its budget to agriculture, it is essential to set up viable and objective tools to measure agricultural activity.

For central and eastern European countries desirous of joining a European Union which devotes half of its budget to agriculture, it is essential to set up viable and objective tools to measure agricultural activity. Led in Bulgaria in 1998, the BANCIK operation is the first stone of a new permanent information system on agricultural and forestry. This important statistical survey on land occupation and use, a result of an exemplary Franco-Bulgarian cooperation, with the support of international organisations, has brought a new outlook on Bulgarian agriculture. Agriculture covers half the national Bulgarian territory, forests cover one third. Between the montaneous and forested South and the Danubian plains of the North given over to field cropping, the regional specialisation is evident. But in the Bulgarian « breadbasket », BANCIK reveals acreages in cereals much larger than expected.