‘The year has been specific’: Tatarstan agriculture minister acknowledges almost half winter crops as problematic
Tatarstan Vice Premier, Minister of Agriculture Marat Zyabbarov assured the residents of the republic that despite the dry summer that led to worse harvest the region is provided with grains and they would have a look at the winter crops only next spring.
“No grain problems”
Marat Zyabbarov called 2023 as specific and reminded people that spring came early, starting to sow early agricultural workers faced frost that destroyed a part of the grains. So Tatarstan not only hasn’t broken last year’s harvest record but also reduced the indicator.
“Of course, the year has been specific, dry enough. Last year we harvested over 5 million tonnes of grain, this year have collected 3.5 million tonnes of net grain,” the head of the Tatarstan Ministry of Agriculture said.
Marat Zyabbarov also said that Tatarstan lost a part of the crops in 2023 because of temperature ups and downs in spring that came early. Regional fields seriously lacked humidity in summer.
There were problems with winter crops too. 50.000 ha more winter crops than planned were sowed this year — 550.000 ha, but nearly half of them are in a bad state.
“Nowadays some 60% have sprouted. According to the Russian Agricultural Centre that analyses our results is that around 40% are in a bad state. But warm weather is ahead, we’ll see, perhaps something will improve. But this will be clear in spring,” he said.
Even though the weather spoiled Tatarstan’s field season, its results shouldn’t have a negative impact on the population and its households. The region will have enough grain until the next season.
“We have the amount of grains the republic needs. We also have last year’s resting grains. Our bread bakers don’t have problems with grains, forage, flour grains,” Marat Zyabbarov assured the Tatarstan residents.
Agriculturists’ work isn’t yet over. They need to collect the cold-resistant harvest, but the weather doesn’t yet let doing this.
“The main field works are over here. Late crops such as sunflower, maize, sugar beetroot need to be harvested. There is just a small amount of them to be collected. But since it is raining and snowing, it is hard to go into the fields,” the Tatarstan minister of agriculture and food said and specified that the works would go on when it freezes a bit.