Today, on March 31, Head of the DPR Denis Pushilin held a working meeting with Minister of Agro-Industrial Policy and Food Artyom Kramarenko. According to a correspondent of the DPR Official Website, the Head of State first inquired after progress in carrying out the spring farm work, which is ongoing now on agricultural fields of the country.
“I know that the sowing season started earlier this year, the weather changed the plans somewhat. What condition are the winter crops in? Of course, I wonder how the agriculture will proceed in general. What does the state need to do to help? What is the ministry planning to do to facilitate the work of farms? What steps will be taken for our part?” Denis Pushilin said.
In his report, the DPR Minister of Agro-Industrial Policy and Food spoke in detail about the sowing campaign of early grains and legumes, industrial and forage crops.
“This year’s s sowing campaign started 10 days earlier. As a result, all agro-technological deadlines have moved. To date, we have sown more than 32 thousand hectares of spring crops out of the planned 42 thousand, that is 77%. The bulk is spring barley, 26.2 thousand ha, 3.7 thousand ha of peas, 639 ha of spring wheat, and 439 ha of oats. More than 70 percent of industrial crops such as mustard and flax have been sown. Soils for sowing corn and sunflower are being prepared. The sowing of forage crops such as cover perennial grasses and coverless perennial grasses falls somewhat behind. The cause of that is the lack of moisture in the soil. The pace of additional fertilization has slowed down because of that,” Artyom Kramarenko reported.
At the same time, the Minister noted that the amount of sowing fertilizers be put into the soil was more than 31 thousand tons of gross weight or 13 thousand tons of primary nutrient. In general, the sufficiency of fertilizers in farms this year is higher by 32% than last year.
“We passed the winter in a fairly satisfactory condition. For the most part, our crops have overwintered well. 109.9 thousand hectares have sprung up. To date, the condition of the crops is good. The field work is ongoing in full,” he said.
Artyom Kramarenko also said that the crop patterns would change this year and the areas for barley would decrease. “This is largely because of the promotion of animal husbandry. Our key proposal is to reduce the tax burden on livestock farms, as they are the main consumers of all grain products in the Republic, and are the stabilizer and driving force of our agriculture, which allow our farms to get gains in the form of meat and milk in bad years. The Ministry’s position is 1% of turnover and 0% for the profit tax. We have drawn up all the necessary economic rationale in this matter and we will provide our viewpoint at the next meeting,” the Minister of Agro-Industrial Policy and Food noted.