BUCHAREST, September 3, 2008 (AFP) - About a thousand farmers protested Wednesday across Romania, driving into the capital with their tractors and lorries to demand a drastic cut in fuel prices, unions said.

'We want a 50-percent cut in oil prices for farmers,' the president of the federation of farmers' unions Agrostar, Nicolae Stefan, told AFP.

'Now that the harvest season has started, we have no resources left,' he said.

'If the problem hasn't been solved by next month, we will protest again and blockade roads,' Stefan added, noting that farmers currently paid the pump price of 4 lei (1.13 euros, 1.63 dollars) per liter of fuel.

The government introduced a cut in July, 'but since the amount of money meant to sustain the cut was limited, only 20 percent of farmers benefited from it,' he said.

In Bucharest, a column of about 30 tractors and lorries paraded Wednesday in front of parliament, government buildings and the agriculture ministry, where the farmers handed in their demands.

In the central Romanian town of Sfantu Gheorghe, hundreds of farmers gathered in the city centre, carrying a coffin filled with potatoes, wheat and milk, to mark the death of agriculture.

Similar protests also took place in other major cities around the country, including Timisoara in the west, Cluj in the northwest, Baia Mare in the north and Targoviste in the south.

The agriculture and economy ministers met Monday to consider a possible cut in fuel prices, in line with European regulations.

'We presented our proposals and we're hoping we will receive an answer from the (economy) ministry soon to begin work on this project,' Agriculture Minister Dacia Ciolos said.