Vitebsk region's agricultural enterprises to be consolidated

September 21, Vitebsk / Diana Kurilo - BELTA /. Agricultural enterprises of the Vitebsk region will be consolidated. This was stated today at the solemn ceremony of seeing off the Vitebsk region delegation to the republican festival-fair of village workers "Dazhynki-2012" by the Chairman of the Vitebsk Regional Executive Committee Alexander Kosinets, BELTA correspondent reports. "In the coming years, significant work needs to be done to integrate farms. The future belongs to large-scale production," the governor believes. In his opinion, a modern farm should have at least 7 thousand hectares of arable land, so agricultural enterprises with 1.5-2 thousand hectares of plowland will have to merge. As Alexander Kosinets emphasized, energy-intensive equipment, which is available in sufficient quantities in the farms, allows for the cultivation of large areas. However, a shortage of machine operators remains an acute problem for the enterprises. This harvest alone involved more than 1.6 thousand townspeople in tractor and combine operations. Solving this problem is a priority for the regional agricultural department and the regional executive committee, the governor added. -0-