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Belarus’s grain harvest over 9m tonnes in 2014

22.08.2014

MINSK, 22 August (BelTA) – This year Belarus will harvest more than 10 million tonnes of grain, corn included, Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Food Vladimir Grakun told a press conference, BelTA has learned.

"Today we can say that the harvest campaign in the country is complete. Less than 15,000 hectares under crops remain unharvested in Vitebsk Oblast. All other regions have finished harvesting. Belarus cropped 9,167,000 tonnes of grain (excluding corn and cereal)," Vladimir Grakun said. With corn included, the harvest will exceed 10 million tonnes "This year we expected to get about 1.5 million tonnes of corn. But due to the heat wave, the figures are likely to be slightly lower. Somewhere around 1 million tonnes," Vladimir Grakun noted.

The deputy minister stressed that this year's harvest is not only big but also of high quality. More than 40 districts of Belarus reported the yields over 40 centners/ha (39.3 on average across the country). Some districts had the yield over 70 and 80, and even more than 90 centners of grain per hectare. For example, the agricultural enterprise Progress-Vertilishki (Grodno District) had the yield of 99 centners/ha, OAO Gastellovskoye (Minsk District) - 94 centners/ha, and OAO Novaya Zhizn (Nesvizh District) - 92.4 centners/ha.

According to Vladimir Grakun, strict enforcement of technologies help farmers achieve such results. In turn, deputy agriculture minister Vasil Sedin believes that the investments in the development of agro-industrial complex of the country have also played a big positive role. "In recent years, very much has been done for agriculture, in particular, grain-processing. For the past three years 560 grain drying complexes have been built across the country. The capacity of the grain storage facilities has been extended to about 1 million tonnes," he said.

According to the deputy ministers, all prerequisites have been created in the country to increase grain yield up to 45 centners/ha.