Farms in the Vitebsk region will replenish their fleet with 500 harvesters by the start of the harvesting campaign

June 28, Vitebsk / Sergei Kotovets - BELTA /. Farms in the Vitebsk region plan to replenish their fleet with five hundred new grain harvesters by the start of the harvesting campaign, the deputy chairman of the committee for agriculture and food of the regional executive committee, Boris Efremov, told a BELTA correspondent. A total of 2.1 thousand grain harvesting machines will operate in the fields of the region, including more than 60% of harvesters (mainly high-performance KZS-10K and KZS-1218) manufactured no earlier than 3 years ago, purchased by the region on a lease basis. Taking into account the equipment supplied this year, the average regional seasonal load per harvester for grain harvesting will be 205 hectares. This will allow farms to harvest grain crops at an optimal pace in about 20 good weather days, noted Boris Efremov. In the second ten days of July, farms in the southern regions of the region plan to start harvesting winter rapeseed, for which about 1.3 thousand harvesters equipped with special attachments for harvesting oilseeds are already ready. In general, the readiness of the main fleet of equipment, which will be primarily involved in harvesting the new crop, is over 80%, added Boris Efremov. In the region, by the start of the harvesting campaign, it is also planned to commission 36 modern high-performance grain drying complexes of domestic production. Thus, a total of about 600 such complexes will be involved during the harvesting work. Taking into account the capacities of the grain drying facilities of the grain processing plants, the region will be able to dry about 1.5 million tons of grain, which is ripening in the fields today, without losses and within optimal timeframes, noted Boris Efremov. In the future, in 2011-2015, the region plans to build about 150 more grain drying complexes, which will allow decommissioning outdated equipment that has been in operation for 15-20 years. -0-