STUDY ON THE USE OF AGRICULTURAL LAND IN THE NORTH-WEST DEVELOPMENT REGION OF ROMANIA BASED ON THE SOCIOLOGICAL SURVEY

The paper aims to present the situation of agricultural lands and the effects of their management on the sustainable development of agriculture in the North-West Development Region of Romania, at the level of 2023. The study is based on data taken through the sociological survey method based on a questionnaire, of a number of 276 respondents. The collected data were interpreted for the following indicators: the type of agriculture practiced, agricultural techniques applied, the involvement of agricultural farms in associative forms, the surface of agricultural land, irrigation of agricultural land, fragmentation of agricultural land, types of crops and the use of modern technologies for a digital agriculture. After analysing the data, it is observed that a predominantly conventional and mixed agriculture is practiced, using an average of 150 hectares per farm. Due to the large presence of arable land, the main crops are field crops, represented by cereals and fodder plants. Permanent crops represented in particular by permanent meadows are owned by the majority of farmers (87.3%), and horticultural crops are present in only 27.17% of farms. Modern technologies have a high potential in the development of the region and must be exploited more in the future.