🔸 Banca Transilvania and the University of Agricultural Sciences and Veterinary Medicine Cluj-Napoca are organizing courses to build agribusiness skills.

🔸 The 22 participants come from families who bank with BT and run agribusinesses, across 16 counties.

🔸 Agribusiness education and encouraging entrepreneurship are essential to growing family businesses and preparing generational succession.

🔸 BT is committed to helping reposition agriculture in Romania.

Banca Transilvania is investing in agribusiness education and in growing family businesses in agriculture through the launch of the Agro Intergeneration program, in partnership with University of Agricultural Sciences and Veterinary Medicine Cluj-Napoca (USAMV). BT and USAMV are laying the groundwork for a more fruitful future through courses aimed at developing skills in agricultural technology, management and marketing.

Banca Transilvania’s commitment is to help reposition agriculture in Romania through education, financing, and greater technology adoption and specialisation. For BT, modernising agriculture means entrepreneurs focus increasingly on overseeing technology, while equipment and machinery do the work. The result is, on the one hand, higher productivity and, on the other, a smaller environmental footprint. In this context, agribusiness education and fostering entrepreneurship are essential to growing family businesses.  

The 22 participants in the Agro Intergeneration program are members of families who are BT agribusiness clients, involved in their parents’ businesses, across 16 counties. The program starts this week and runs over the course of an academic year, with modules on farm management, financial management, leadership, marketing, innovation in agriculture, and more. Courses are delivered by professors from USAMV Cluj-Napoca, specialists from various fields and members of the bank’s team.

• Sorin Ignat, Agribusiness Director, Banca Transilvania: “The future depends on how we prepare today. That’s why Agro Intergeneration is more than a program for us; it’s a new approach we want to plant in Romanian families with businesses in agriculture. More generations in the same business means tighter-knit families, sharing experiences and best practices, and complementarity. For the family and the communities they belong to, it means a role model, a name carried forward, greater competitiveness, the next generation’s prosperity and jobs.”

• Prof. dr. Cornel Catoi, Rector of USAMV Cluj-Napoca: “Economic, social and environmental challenges require farmers to be at the heart of Europe’s rural communities. This is why support for generational succession on farms and encouraging a new generation of farmers is a key element in developing agriculture. In this context, the project aims to help perpetuate family farms and develop a farm succession plan that allows a smooth transition from one generation to the next, with minimal disruption to both the business and family relationships. USAMV Cluj-Napoca can thus help increase the intellectual capital of farm managers — a decisive factor in successful farm succession.”

Labour migration abroad, declining interest in agricultural activities, an ageing population, and the need for synergy and professionalisation to take a modern approach to agriculture are among the reasons behind uncertainty around succession in family agribusinesses.

Banca Transilvania has supported agricultural education since 2013, through scholarships awarded to students at USAMV Cluj-Napoca, Bucuresti, Timisoara, Iasi, Constanta and Craiova.

With over 31,000 agribusiness clients, BT has nearly 18% of this market and is the largest supporter of Romanian agriculture.