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Belarus plans to harvest around 8.5m tonnes of grain in 2019

MINSK, 7 August (BelTA) – Belarus plans to harvest around 8.5 million tonnes of grain this year, head of the crop department at the Agriculture and Food Ministry Vasily Yadlovsky said at a press conference on 7 August, BelTA has learned.

“We expect that agricultural organizations will crop 8.5 million tonnes of grain including maize in bunker weight. This year, maize is growing well and cobs are developing on time,” Vasily Yadlovsky said.

He noted that farming enterprises and the private sector expect to crop around 400,000 tonnes of grain. Moreover, Belarus has already harvested 600,000 tonnes of rape. “These numbers give a total of 9.5 million tonnes,” Vasily Yadlovsky noted.

In 2019, the area planted to maize amounts to over one million hectares, which is up from 987,000 hectares last year. “We intend to harvest 80,000 hectares more of grain maize than last year. In 2018, we harvested 170,000 hectares of grain maize, and this year we intend to harvest at least 250,000 hectares. Maize yields twice as much grain from one hectare as other grain crops, that is why we increase the area planted to maize. In 2018, we harvested 1.1 million tonnes of grain maize in terms of granary weight, while this year our target is 1.6-1.7 million tonnes,” Vasily Yadlovsky said.

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