The regional administration chaired by the Governor Alexei Ostrovsky hosted a working meeting to discuss the readiness of agricultural producers in the Smolensk region for the spring sowing campaign.
One of the main topics on the agenda was the increase in the area under crops for spring grains, spring rapeseed, potatoes, corn and various vegetables in 2021. For this, many agrarians use state support in the form of compensation for monetary funds, soft loans, including microloans. These measures should be released in a timely manner to help meet benchmarks.
The issue of holding a sowing campaign is under the personal control of the head of the region, depending on the completion of tasks, Alexey Ostrovsky will make decisions on additional support for municipalities. For additional control of the issue, specialized regional headquarters began to function.
The meeting was attended by the chairman of the council of AKKOR of the Smolensk region Andrusenko Sergey Sergeevich, who thanked the head of the region on behalf of the farmers. In his speech, he raised a number of issues that require special attention:
• Rising prices: spare parts, mineral fertilizers, fuels and lubricants;
• The importance of timely receipt of state support funds and soft loans for small businesses;
• Maintaining a large percentage of refusals to small businesses to obtain agricultural machinery on lease from JSC Rosagroleasing.
The issue of providing the region's farmers with seeds is no longer so acute: more than 87% of the needs have already been covered. The region is already completely ready for the sowing of fiber flax, but the purchase of rapeseed, potatoes and vegetables is still ongoing.
Oleg Tikhonov, Executive Director of PJSC Dorogobuzh, reported on the situation in providing agricultural commodity producers in the region with mineral fertilizers. Every year, for several years now, the enterprise has been supplying farmers with a part of its fertilizers on a gratuitous basis by agreement with Alexey Ostrovsky. In 2021, at least a thousand tons of fertilizers will be allocated for spring field work: azophoska, ammonium nitrate, calcium carbonate, which will save farmers about 17 million rubles.
The head of the Smolensk branch of JSC "Rosselkhozbank" Alexey Senokosov informed the audience about the financing of measures for the preparation and conduct of spring field work. In particular, in the first quarter of 2021, the financial and credit organization allocated 194 million rubles to support the Smolensk agrarians, which is 3 times more than in the same period last year. A quarter of the amount is directed directly to the spring field work, the rest - to strengthen the machine and tractor fleets of agricultural enterprises.