Teleorman
Danube plain breadbasket producing 3.5% of Romania's agriculture while recovering from industrial collapse
The Cumans named it 'wild forest'—Deli orman in Turkic—but modern Teleorman is all plain, the Burnas stretching fertile and flat from the Olt River to the Danube. This is agricultural Romania distilled: 3.5% of the country's farm output from 2.4% of its territory, the humus-rich soil producing corn, wheat, sunflower, and tobacco while beekeepers harvest honey of 'special performance.' Turnu Magurele once commanded this grain basket as county capital and Danube port, a ferry still connecting to Bulgarian Nikopol. But the Communist-era Chemical Fertilizer Plant that swelled the city to 37,000 collapsed after 1989, and population fled to Bucharest and Western Europe. Alexandria replaced Turnu Magurele as capital in 1968; both cities now navigate post-industrial decline on agricultural foundations.