Stijn Tijhuis

Healthy meal, healthy landscape

By Stijn Tijhuis

9 July – 2.30 p.m. Our group of 34 Dutch and 2 Chinese hungry people landed at Baneasa Airport, Bucharest. We needed some food. Good food and enough to drink is necessary to process all new impressions. Since Romanians eat as well, we wondered what the Romanian kitchen could offer us. It was hard to get something on the airport, so we drove a few kilometers. In a huge shopping mall, our eyes were drawn by the advertisements of a fastfood paradise with Burger King, KFC, McDonalds etc. People told us about Romania: “go there now, this land is changing so fast, you’ll never see it back in it’s current state”. When a society is changing, eating habits change too. You can see that on the street. Based on impressions and stories of the BUITEX 2011, this text reflects on the relation between food, health and landscape in Romania.

Absence of food in the past and now
People were hungry in the 80’s. There were times without milk, cheese, meat or eggs. It was this time that Nicolas Ceaucescu built his hunger circuses. In Bucharest, you can find a few of these “agro-alimentary complexes”. That’s how the communist regime called them. These buildings were intended as markets and public refectories for communal meals.# Big buildings, intended as hypermarkets to fight the lack of food en facilitate the distribution. But who cares about such a complex when all the available food is exported by Ceaucescu to repay debts. Ceaucescu was often paid in natura by his trade-relations and sold this again over the world. It’s hard to believe but there once was a month that Romania had the world biggest export of banana’s. This is one reason that the organized food facilities, now called hunger circuses, have never worked as intended. Instead of a “agro-alimentary complex”, one of the complexes changed in a shopping mall after the ’89 revolution. When you try to find ingredients for a good meal in these malls, you are lucky if you find a supermarket in a far-away corner of the mall. What once were the ‘empty’ hunger circuses, are still places where (healthy) food hardly plays any role.

Coffeeshop policy for snackcorners
Fast food fits better in the image of the shopping mall and the life of the Romanian citizen. But the consuming of this unhealthy food is so rapidly increasing that governance is needed to protect the children. In Holland, we have a required minimum distance of coffee shops to schools. In Romania, they even take the next step: fastfoodcorners are not allowed within 2km of a school. With the times of hunger in the collective memory, eating habits change so fast that the health of the people is again threatened.

Romanian eat habits
But don’t the Romanians have own eating traditions? Yes, they have. We tried nice plates with polenta  and they have recognized specialties with pork and sheep. I think you will find the best Romanian taste on the countryside. We had a big lunch in a Saxion village (Malanchrav), with all kinds of salads and self-made cheese, meat and bread. Many people still have their own places where they buy their ingredients. The minimarkets are characteristic in the street. And also small stalls with vegetables and fruit are widespread. Especially on the country site, the care and knowledge of the landscape and her products is still present.

Hmmm… apple juice
We saw good examples of projects that make use of the knowledge of agriculture and the conditions of the land, to give locals a future in their own environment by making good quality products. These projects were initiated by the Mihai Eminescu Trust in Saxon villages in Transylvania. The agricultural landscapes in these villages consists of many small parcels. They don’t have the machines to upscale their production and in some cases the land is not in use because it didn’t got an owner after the land restitution after the ’89 revolution. They don’t have a future in large scale agriculture. But the soil is rich and the products are made with careful craftsmanship. The Mihai Eminescu Trust helps with the production and distribution of bottles apple juice in Malanchrav. By this, people have income and can live on in the village. And there are investments to maintain the beautiful orchard. Landscape development is combined with an income for the locals. An income for people that profit the least from the democratic system.

Regional developments by agricultural investments
The EU-membership plays a double role in the development of the countryside. The cucumbers in the supermarket are Dutch. The EU-membership makes trade easier. This means a wider range of products in the market. On the other hand, it’s means a lower sales of own regional products. Sometimes, European money, intended for countryside development, is spend on historic sites to enhance the tourist value. We rode to Biertan to visit the (UNESCO) Citadel. Over there, we had a beautiful view on terraced hills, remnants of vineyards. In my view, it’s not only the Citadel that has a landscape and tourist value. This vine tradition and other regional agricultural products can contribute to a total experience of the village by the tourist who is looking for a free feeling in a healthy, natural environment. And money for projects to stimulate a sustainable agricultural production, makes locals less dependent on tourists.

A beneficial and healthy landscape
The flat landscapes with cereals around Bucharest are totally different than the forested Carpathian Mountains. And so the agricultural system is differs. But wherever in Romania, there is a design task for the landscape architect who can think in terms of agricultural production as well as ecological quality. The challenge is to design landscapes that functions so people benefit from the land by the production of healthy food and the landscape and ecological system benefits by people’s interventions.