Vegetable growers from the village of Gribskoye, Blagoveshchensk region, lost a quarter of their potato crop. Heavy rains flooded the local fields. Only one farm has previously estimated its damage at 2 million rubles. Vegetable growers have to harvest this year in difficult conditions.
One potato bush evaporates 60–70 liters of water. This plant is moisture-loving, vegetable growers say, but not so much. After many days of downpours, the potato fields in Gribskoye look more like rice fields. If the tubers are in damp soil for a long time, they begin to ache and rot.
Farmer Vadim Sokolovsky has been growing potatoes for 11 years. This year I planted seven varieties. But even the most resilient variety called Luck has failed. “Everything is raw, potatoes are stricken with diseases - you see, white dots, - dirty. Although this grade "Luck" is white. Consumers don't like him very much, but he is quite flexible. Produces a good harvest and keeps well. To reduce losses, harvesting this summer began a month earlier, while there is no rain. We started with early varieties, ”says farmer Vadim Sokolovsky.
Early varieties are harvested, but they will not go into storage, they need to be sold now. “And the late varieties are still growing, they have the highest growth now, there is no point in removing them,” the farmer specifies. Work is progressing slowly. The soil is sticky, like plasticine, growers complain. Wet areas are not touched yet: they dig where it is already dry. “Rotten potatoes are common. It rots from the water, it rains so hard! The weather is not good, ”says vegetable grower Elena Makarova.
The farm of the farmer Sokolovsky suffered about 200 tons of potatoes. And on average, 800 tons are harvested here a year. Part of the harvest is used for seeds, part is for sale. Local potatoes are sold to military units, hospitals and kindergartens in the Amur Region.
The crop was not insured. A commission of the Ministry of Agriculture of the Amur Region has already visited Gribskoye. On an area of 100 hectares, the losses were estimated at almost 2 million rubles, and these are not the final results. How many potatoes have grown and dried up, and how many have drowned in puddles, will be counted in the fall.
Source: http://www.amur.info