Cluj farm cooperative awarded U.S. Embassy’s March Entrepreneur

The U.S. Embassy in Bucharest announced on Thursday that its Entrepreneur of the Month for March is Lunca Somesului Mic, a farm cooperative located in Apahida, 5 km east away from Cluj.

According to the U.S. Embassy, the March award to “Lunca Somesului Mic” recognizes the great work this cooperative has made towards enriching the community by working together. “This cooperative has shown that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Pooling their production, they were able to meet the minimum purchase order requirements of large supermarket chains in Romania. As individual producers, these farmers would not have been able to tap into such a large and stable market for their goods (…) The individual farmers of this Cluj region cooperative can now focus their full attention to expanding production instead of also worrying about logistics, marketing and selling their merchandise at the farmer’s markets,” reads an embassy’s press release.

The March EOM award presentation was hosted by the Civitas Foundation for Civil Society, a NGO working since 1992 to promote rural and regional development by strengthening civil society throughout Romania.

The Embassy’s Entrepreneur of the Month is a way to highlight the great creativity and potential present here in Romania, and to spotlight those individuals and companies that have taken the risk to strike out on their own and create their own path.  These local entrepreneurs are developing products and services across a multitude of industries in various regions in Romania.