I would like to invite you to read an interview on my agri career taken by a Romanian newspaper 'Evenimentul zilei'. This interview has been published electronically and on the paper edition on July 19th 2009 on http://www.evz.ro, on Sunday edition.

Mr Sorin Iordache and his boss are the writer of the article.

Also I would like to thank you all not because you are interested in my professional activity but in agriculture, a field where I work but also I find myself as a professional and person.

Regarding the interview there are a few distortions and all these do not represent me...

My academic background offered me the chance to attend a master, MBA, plus many other trainings in agribusiness, leadership etc.

Even if at the first sight the title of the article looks tendentious, I truly find myself in a different syntagm which is:

‘Dana – from driving a tractor to running a successful business’.

Of course, like so many others, I started from the bottom and I really enjoyed the natural process of learning specific to an agri career.

At present, I represent the interest of many foreign investments in Romania, exclusively focused on a variety of activities (from farming to green fields or various niches of the markets).

I would like to wish to all the ones committed to this field not to give in by the weather or times, to keep on persevering and to believe in the fruitful nature and especially in people.

Hoping for meeting high caliber people and opportunities, thank you to all of you and enjoy the reading.

Dana Bucur

Agri Business expert

-------------------------------------------------Translation of all article.

You can see her with the tractor 4 o’clock am. In the same time a business woman you turn round to see her in the street.

 Briefings and meetings with air conditioning are the right things after a few hours of ploughing and planting under the sun. Because, if you want to find out how it is going in farming, you must see how the land is cultivated. It is a rule for Dana Bucur (34 years old), a Bucharest business woman.

She specialized in Australia

After short while she graduated Agronomy, Dana Bucur had the chance to be part of Peter Topham’s team, a top 10 UK farmer, with properties land rented all over the world. In 1998 she drove a tractor for the first time. „This was a Massey Ferguson one, quite strong for me, sometimes driving for 16 hours a day, in the fields. Thereof I could reflect all my University and Master studies in the tough reality of the fields – strictly speaking and in the figurative sense. Because you cannot understand farming if you don’t understand how the plants grow, what makes them happy, what is not good to them and how can you help them to mature and yield’, explains Dana.

She offered herself as a volunteer for farming operations in Australia, on Topham’s land. ‘Agriculture is much easier there. The meadows are huge. Taking care of a herd of cows I had to use an ATV’, Dana smiles. Also in UK she learned how to coordinate the office activities.

During agricultural seasons, she wakes up 4 or 5 o’clock am and willing to drive a tractor for ploughing, planting and harvesting next to her workers. Coming back to Bucharest, she changes her clothes becoming the tough business woman ready to negotiate with her clients for the right price of the crops, somewhere in luxurious offices.

‘When you see the giant in the field, you feel very strong’

Dana Bucur has 11 years of farming and agri management. All this time she had to cope with meetings, running the business and field operations. She likes mechanics a lot, not just driving. Also she has preferences. ‘The most I like is a Case Quadtrac tractor, on trails, 150 HP. And if a 24 meters Horsch planter is pulled by the tractor, this is even much more interesting. When you see the giant in the field, you feel really strong!’ she sais.

Lately she is running her own business, and still driving tractors. ‘We had agri projects on hundreds and thousands of hectares in Ilfov, Călăraşi, Tulcea or Constanţa counties. We have rape, wheat, barley, sunflowers and maize. ‘But the most important crop is the industrial hemp for fiber’, she sais. Now, from the industrial hemp planted by Dana Bucur there are made mats for cars like Audi, Volvo, Opel, Ford or Peugeot. It is only a step from agriculture to high life.

RELAXATION

She listens folk music and also working on

a pluringvial dictionary of agri terms. Even in the 16 hours a day in the agri seasons, seven days from seven, Dana Bucur doesn’t forget about enjoyable things ‘I relax with my family. I also listen to music. Classical and folk. I am looking forward to the end of August 2009, for Madonna concert in Romania’, she happily sais.

Born in Gemini, Dana doesn’t admit to be one of them. ‘Generally, I don’t believe in such things. Especially that the sun is not mentioned amongst these planets of the zodiac. I always wondered why the sun doesn’t have its own sign of the zodiac. Exactly the sun itself not be a part of it, the one which gives life to the nature and the one we all should thank to we live”, the tractor lady wonders from her fields.

Amongst fields, combines and business workshops, Dana finds herself some time to write. Not literature, but a pluringvial dictionary of agri terms. It is an indispensable book for the Romanian specialists and for all foreign business investors. Such tool is really needed, but nobody believed in it. ‘Maybe because nobody saw the margins’, ends Dana Bucur.


EVOLUTION. In Australia, Dana with the ATV and a herd of cows.