RACOVAT: Moldovan apple grower Constantin Furculita was dreaming of juicier profits when he pumped some $2 million into his 42-hectare orchard.
But his hopes of a windfall turned sour last summer when Russia unexpectedly slapped an embargo on fruit exports from the ex-Soviet nation in apparent retaliation for its historic shift towards the Europe Union.
"From one day to the next, we found ourselves hit by an embargo and with the harvest in the fields," Furculita told AFP.
"Up to 2014, 99 percent of my production was heading to the Russian market," said the 35-year-old farmer in the northern town of Racovat.
When Moscow imposed the ban in the wake of Chisinau's signing of an association agreement for closer ties with the European Union in June, Furculita saw a huge chunk taken out of his returns.
"My income barely covers my expenses, while farming didn't bring in big money anyway," he said.
Overall, Russia's move has caused an estimated $145 million of losses for Moldova, the poorest country in Europe which still relies largely on agriculture, with the apple industry facing the most bruising time.
Moscow -- which also slapped bans on a wide range of Western products last year in retaliation for sanctions over Ukraine -- has typically used import bans to flex its muscles in disputes with its neighbours.
After the introduction of the embargo on Moldovan fruit, tens of thousands of tonnes of apples rotted in the fields as small farmers had nowhere to store them.
The local currency, the Moldovan leu, has lost around 30 percent of its value since November, making it more expensive for farmers to repay bank loans, and to buy imported treatments for crop diseases.
Moldova has a fair-trade agreement with the EU that entered into force in September, in theory opening the door to a new market.
But "entering the European market is difficult and slow to do," said the president of local farmers' association, UniAgroProtect, Alexandru Slusari.
Out of its annual production of 400,000 tonnes of apples, Moldova has "barely exported 4,000 to the EU, or more precisely to Romania. That's a miniscule amount," Slusari told AFP.
In an unexpected concession, Moscow in February lifted the embargo on an "experimental basis" for 10 Moldovan fruit exporters.
Moldova's deputy agriculture minister Vlad Loghin said a dozen giant trucks carrying around 200 tonnes of apples headed to Russia.
Before the embargo, up to 200,000 tonnes of Moldovan apples went to Russia per year, with the rest sold on the local market, including to local canning factories, and to CIS countries including Kazakhstan.
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