Farms in the Vitebsk region are fully provided with seeds

March 17, Vitebsk / Sergey Kochetov - BELTA /. Farms in the Vitebsk region are fully provided with seeds for the planned sowing areas, the Vitebsk Regional Executive Committee's Agriculture and Food Department informed a BELTA correspondent. The needs for seeds of cereals, rapeseed, and flax have been met by 100%. By the beginning of the sowing campaign, about 1 thousand tons of corn seeds will be purchased from Ukraine through a tender, and the remaining need of 1.5 thousand tons will be met by domestic producers. In addition, 80 tons of flax seeds have been purchased from France for varietal renewal. In 2010, about 25% of flax areas were sown with imported seeds, and by 2015, it is planned to increase this figure to 45%. Spring grain and leguminous crops are planned to be sown in the Vitebsk region on an area of about 257 thousand hectares, 20 thousand hectares are allocated for flax, spring rapeseed will be sown on 13.1 thousand hectares, and corn crops will occupy 100 thousand hectares. In addition, for the 2011 harvest, winter grain crops have been sown on an area of over 240 thousand hectares, with winter wheat and triticale occupying almost 70% of the winter acreage. Winter rapeseed occupies almost 87 thousand hectares, and its sowing area has been expanded by more than 15% compared to 2010. The Vitebsk region's agricultural producers have been set an ambitious task for 2011 to achieve a grain harvest of about 2 million tons, produce 20 thousand tons of flax fiber, 270 thousand tons of potatoes, and 250 thousand tons of rapeseed. It is also necessary to procure more than 1.2 million tons of feed units of forage crops for the public herd. -0-