You're reading: Agriculture Ministry: Ukraine starts sowing spring crops

About 600 hectares have already been sown with spring crops in the southern regions of Ukraine, the Ministry of Agricultural Policy and Food has said.

According to a press release, about 500 ha are sown with peas, 60 ha with barley and 40 ha with oats. All the regions are feeding winter crops.

According to preliminary data from the ministry, all the areas under agricultural crops for the 2017 harvest are 26.8 million hectares, which corresponds to the figure of 2016.

Grain crops in all categories of farms are to be sown on 14.4 million hectares. Spring crops are to be sown on 7.2 million hectares, in particular early spring cereals on 2.4 million hectares.

The ministry reported agricultural enterprises had already purchased 800,000 tonnes of mineral fertilizers (83 percent of the demand), 298,000 tonnes of diesel fuel and 70,000 tonnes of petrol, which is 74 percent of the demand for the period of the spring field work.

The technical park of agricultural machinery includes 309,000 tractors and more than 50,000 harvesters.

In the first month of 2017 agrarians acquired 341 units of machinery worth about Hr 320.5 million.

According to the information of the agrarian agency, administrative barriers that arose in part of seed certification have been completely eliminated.