Italian firm brings rice back to Romania

By Radu Marinas

VLADENI, Romania (Reuters) - Romanian communist leader Nicolae Ceausescu loved Italian risotto, but he probably would have hated to see Romania's rice farms being taken over by Italian and other western companies.

As the world price of rice has risen -- tripling this year and leading to scarcity worries and export curbs by big producers in Asia -- European farmers have begun to expand eastwards.

In particular, they are buying up Ceausescu's rice paddies, many of which were abandoned after his death by firing squad and the end of communism in Romania in 1989.

This gives the impoverished Balkan state, with its water-rich lowlands, hot climate and rich soil, the chance to become a top European rice producer in coming years.

"Western expertise gives rice a new future in Romania," said Ion Dragusin, 63, who headed rice farming in Vladeni under Ceausescu.

Rice has never been a popular food in Romania, where wheat and maize are key crops. But Ceausescu was known to like risotto, and, according to a cook who prepared food for him at a hunting lodge in the Carpathian mountains, he often enjoyed a bowl of rice and milk pudding.

In the 1970s, following the example of China and North Korea, Ceausescu forced thousands of newly landless peasants and convicts to work vast paddies around the village of Vladeni in south-eastern Romania, part of a grand plan to make Romania self-sufficient.

Now, Romania's rice days are returning.  Continued...