Sowing went smoothly in the Moscow region

As the Minister of Agriculture and Food of the Moscow region Andrey Razin reported, around 224.5 thousand hectares of spring crops were sown in the region in 2020. That is 20 thousand hectares more than last year.

“Despite the pandemic and severe weather conditions, the sowing campaign works were implemented without delays and at the planned pace. Moreover, thanks to coordinated work, our farmers performed sowing at a high level. In total, 224.461 thousand hectares of spring crops were sown in the region, which is 20.1 thousand hectares more than the result of last year,” said Andrey Razin.

“Besides, 88.6 thousand hectares of grain and leguminous were sown in the Moscow region. The farmers predict the harvest at the level of 418-420 thousand tons, which is about 7.8% more than last year. The sown areas of cereals (spring wheat, barley, oats and corn for grain) increased greatly by 19.9 thousand hectares compared to 2019,” noted Andrey Razin.

Agricultural producers also managed to exceed the last year’s figures for the oilseeds.

“We plan to increase the gross harvest of oilseeds and collect up to 50 thousand tons, which is 13.4% (5.9 thousand tons) more than the previous year. The increase in the gross harvest of oilseeds occurs largely due to the increase in the sowing of winter rape. Agricultural enterprises intend to start the rape harvesting on July 25,” reported Andrey Razin.

According to the Minister’s statement, the total sown area of forage crops this year amounted to more than 91 thousand hectares, which is 3.6 thousand hectares more than the last year.

“The farms of the region also planted 7.4 thousand hectares of vegetables and 13.7 thousand hectares of potatoes. However, due to the heavy rains, we lost about 3 thousand hectares of vegetable, potato and bean crops. They were flooded, and we couldn’t save the affected crops, especially in the north of the region,” emphasized Andrey Razin.

According to the Minister’s opinion, rains will also affect the gross harvest of vegetables.

“The gross harvest of open field vegetables, including potatoes, will be lower. We plan to harvest a little more than 380 thousand tons of potatoes, while the last year we collected more than 463 thousand tons. Also, we plan to harvest 307 thousand tons of vegetables, which is 1.5% less than last year,” explained Andrey Razin.

The Minister said that the harvesting campaign of winter crops will start in late July and vegetables in the first decade of August.