A career switch with good consequences

Mr. Constantin is a 45-year old farmer and lives together with his wife and child in the Tighina region in the Republic Moldova. Mr. Constatin studied physics and worked as an inspector for the Ministry of Education. However, in the 1990s the Government sector was plagued with many problems; salaries were often not paid, or only very late.

After having worked as an inspector for almost 15 years, Mr. Constatin decided to switch into horticulture, hoping that this would provide him and his family with a more stable income. He had taken over the land that was previously cultivated by his parents. Due to the lack of financial means, he was severely constrained further developing his horticulture venture.

Then, in 2002, Mr. Constatin was able to secure a loan from the Rural Economic Development Fund, a fund managed by the National Farmers Federation Moldova (NFFM). With these funds he was able to set-up a nursery in a plastic tunnel greenhouse, allowing him to plant seedling during the winter season already.

Mr. Constatin has been very successful developing his horticulture. In his greenhouse he is growing seedlings (tomato, watermelon, pickles); once the small seedlings are big enough, they are transplanted into other fields; parts of the seedlings are also sold on the local market to other farmers. The production of tomatoes has been excellent; together with colleagues he was able to have sufficient quantity to export to Belarus where he got a premium price for his tomatoes.

“This experience was vey importance for me; with support of NFFM I had to do business planning, reporting etc; I also built up a credit-history. It gave me a lot of confidence in myself. In addition, people around saw that I was able to develop my agriculture business, and they in return had a lot of confidence in me!”
Mr. Constantin is continuing developing his business. He recently started building a new greenhouse of about 3.000 m2.