LUCRĂRI ŞTIINŢIFICE, SERIA I, VOL.XX (2) 77 SITUATION OF POPULATION EMPLOYED IN AGRICULTURE MATEOC-SÎRB NICOLETA 1,2 , MATEOC-SÎRB TEODOR 1 , NAN ANCA-IOANA 1 , FLOREA ADINA 1 , MĂNESCU CAMELIA* 1 1 Banat University of Agricultural Sciences and Veterinary Medicine "King Michael I of Romania" from Timisoara, Faculty of Agricultural Management, Timisoara, Romania 2 Romanian Academy-Timisoara Branch, Timisoara *Corresponding author’s e-mail: cameliaoborocea2004@yahoo.com Abstract: We need to underline that economic development of agriculture, particularly of agricultural households, is closely dependent on each category of agricultural production resources. Without underestimating the role and importance of all resources, we need to mention that, of all resources and production factors, human resources have a decisive influence on productive factors in agriculture, no matter the agricultural system. This is the reason why the authors of this article present the evolution of population employed in Romanian agriculture based on their analysis. Key words: people employed, diminution, constraints, share, youth INTRODUCTION Population is defined as a community of people that live within a certain geographical area.[5]. Socio-economically, population may be described as a social subsystem counting inhabitants, density, age and gender structure, birth rate and death rate, feminisation, migrations, ageing, and labour force renewal. [2] In Romania, economically, there is still a poor diversification of economic activities since most localities still have an agriculture-based economy.[8] Non-performing agriculture still dominates with small size agricultural holdings that lack proper equipment and that can only cover family subsistence in most cases. [1] MATERIALS AND METHODS Analysis of Romanian rural area allowed the caption of the main issues confronting our rural areas. One of the methods used to prepare the raw analysis material was to document the official databases provided by the National Institute of Statistics (INS – time series Tempo Online), Romania’s Statistics Yearbook – collection, databases published by EUROSTAT, as well as different publications or complementary information retrieved from the Internet. RESEARCH RESULTS During the entire period after December 1989, agriculture has played a very important social role acting like an occupational buffer against transition socio-economic effects and absorbing an important share of the labour force released by urban industries. [6] Thus, the decades of rapid industrialisation of our economy were followed by increasing decrease of the active population in agriculture, an extremely complex socio- economic phenomenon with huge implications in rural society. [7] As for the quantitative and structural-qualitative evolution of labour resources in Romania’s agriculture, we need to mention that long-term labour force in agriculture follows the general trend of developing countries – absolute and relative diminution. The diminution of agriculture-employed labour resources started, practically, after the