------------------------------------------------------------------- 1960 1962 1969 1970 ------------------------------------------------------------------- Agricultural Land Arable 24,268 24,515 24,146 24,050 Pasture 6,953 6,924 7,426 7,420 Meadow 3,427 3,447 3,506 3,499 Vineyard 768 744 857 857 Orchard 529 662 1,053 1,067 Total Agricultural Land 35,945 36,292 36,988 36,893 ------ ------ ------ ------ Forest Land 15,822 15,807 15,607 15,604 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. Agricultural land by type of use and forest area. Source: Adapted from _Anuarul Statistic al Republicii Socialiste Romania_, 1970 (Statistical Yearbook of the Socialist Republic of Romania, 1970), Bucharest, 1970, pp. 246-247. Forests occupied an area of 15,604,000 acres in 1970, the equivalent of about 27 percent of the country's land surface. The forest acreage declined slowly but steadily after 1961, for a total loss of almost 247,000 acres. Slightly more than two-thirds of the more than 24 million acres of crop area in 1969 was under grains. Technical crops for industrial uses, consisting mainly of oilseeds and sugar beets, and fodder crops occupied almost one-fourth of the sown area. The remainder of less than 10 percent was devoted to legumes, potatoes, vegetables, and melons and to seed-producing and experimental plots. Half the grain acreage was devoted to corn, which is used for food and feed by the farmers; and more than two-fifths was under wheat, which is the staple food of the urban population. The grain acreage declined in absolute and in relative terms after 1960, when it accounted for almost three-fourths of the sown area. All other major crop acreages, excluding that under sugar beets, increased during the 1960-69 period (see table 8). Romanian economists attributed the shift in the crop pattern to the government's emphasis on adapting crop production to the economic needs of the country and to the natural conditions of individual farms. A severe flood in the spring of 1970, the worst in the country's history, reduced the crop area by nearly 1.25 million acres below the level of 1969. _Table 8._ _Cultivated Acreage in Romania, by Major Crops, 1960 and 1969_ (in thousands of acres)