The sowing campaign for farmers will begin in the near future, as soon as the weather permits. However, vegetable-growing enterprises have been sowing for several weeks already – seedlings of cabbage and some varieties of onions are located in greenhouses and spring greenhouses. From sowing to planting in the soil, seedlings grow in cassettes, with this method of growing, 100% survival rate is achieved in the field.
“Every year, due to the traditional seasonal reduction in the stocks of vegetables of the so-called “borscht” set of domestic production, we observe an increase in domestic prices. In the current economic conditions, this issue is becoming particularly acute – every day, Kuzbass residents publish comments on social networks with complaints about rising prices for certain categories of vegetable products. In this regard, the agricultural producers of the region have been given the task of increasing production for 2022,” Andrey Aritkulov, Minister of Agriculture and Processing Industry of the region, explained.
Indeed, to date, the volume of open field vegetables produced by local agricultural producers in the 2021 season has been sold. Before harvesting a new crop, Kuzbass buys vegetables from the southern regions, the climatic conditions of which allow producers to start the sowing campaign a few months earlier than in Siberia, and, accordingly, supply the crop of the current year to the trading networks of Kuzbass.
The Ministry of Agriculture of Russia has set the task for the regions to increase the sown area and the volume of the gross harvest of potatoes and open ground vegetables. This year in Kuzbass, the planned area for planting potatoes in agricultural organizations and K (F) Kh is 8.5 thousand hectares, open ground vegetables – 1040 hectares. This will increase the gross harvest of vegetables to 30 thousand tons (2021 – 25 thousand tons, self-sufficiency was 45.5%). As for potatoes, the self-sufficiency of the region is 116.4%, so it is planned to maintain production at the level of 2021 (170 thousand tons).
The sowing campaign traditionally begins with onions; under favorable weather conditions, it will be sown in late April-early May.
