Interagro has decided to cultivate more maize than sunflower, planning to get to 17,000 hectares cultivated with maize in 2009.

Interagro, owned by Ioan Niculae, will focus on investments in the agricultural sector this year, with the sector being considered as one of the most lucrative fields, particularly owing to the favourable context generated by agricultural product price hikes.

"For us, the agricultural sector has always been profitable. (...) The recent price trend is beneficial and is helping us to develop our company. Moreover, I don't believe we'll reach the threshold of 100 dollars per tonne of grain like in the past," explains Sorin Dogaru, head of the agricultural department with Interagro.

The agricultural sector, silos and agricultural production respectively, account for around 20% of Interagro group of firm's turnover, put at 2.8bn euros last year.

Agricultural production will bring 340m euros this year, up 30% from 2007, according to company data.

Interagro owns 50,000 hectares of farming land, of which 60% are used for to autumn crops and 40% to spring crops. "We'll allocate a larger part of areas destined to sunflower crops to maize. This year, we've doubled areas for maize, to 15,000 hectares, and we want to reach 17,000 hectares of maize in 2009," says Dogaru.

According to him, "the drought did not harm only last year's crops, but this year's crops, too. So far, estimates are encouraging". Nevertheless, a new drought would be fatal for agricultural producers. "Maize was the hardest affected by drought. We got 1.5 tonnes/hectare, compared to the 10-12 tonnes we had expected. We hope this year will be better and expect a harvest of at least 8 tonnes/hectare," says Dogaru.

Whereas in 2007 Interagro spent some 2m euros to acquire special equipment, this year's investment budget amounts to 5m euros, to be us