New Challenges and Opportunities for Mountain Agri-Food Economy in South Eastern Europe. A Scenario for Efficient and Sustainable Use of Mountain Product, Based on the Family Farm, in an Innovative, Adapted Cooperative Associative System – Horizon 2040

The Romanian mountains’ agri-food economy (74,000 km2) is provided by family farms, based on about 2.3 million hectares of grasslands and hayfields, ruminant livestock breeding and organic fertilizers. The high quality of “mountain products” (dairy, meat, etc.) is given by the floral polymorphism of grasslands, the absence of use of chemicals, unpolluted environment. The fast demographic growth and the existence of a significant market segment interested in ‘mountain products“, which are healthy, may ensure sustainability. The “key” is to ensure motivating prices, especially for milk and meat – raw materials. The type of “savage” capitalism installed - through “processors” and other middlemen, have ridiculously low prices that induced discouragement, poverty, abandonment of agriculture, migration of rural young people and serious damage of the functional biodiversity of grasslands in mountain areas - this system being compromised and “toxic” for the mountain economy. It urgently requires an alternative, by which to ensure a separation of ‘mountain product”, significant volume and continuity throughout the year, quality and health guarantees for consumers. An innovative associative-cooperative system adapted to realities, organized at the level of traditional bio-areas for “niche mountain products ‘and niche consumers”, with local brands - could provide recovery and sustainable growth, through self-reproduction. The area that is interested: the less-favored mountain area from Romania and other countries with mountains, especially from in South-Eastern Europe – EU members and countries accessing the EU.