Spring crops in Russia already sown on 500,000 hectares, pace higher than last year - deputy agriculture minister

UFA. March 22 (Interfax) - Russia's spring crops have so far been sown on 500,000 hectares, which is ahead of last year, Russia's Deputy Agriculture Minister Andrey Razin told Interfax on the sidelines of the Agrocomplex-2023 agro-industrial forum on Wednesday in Ufa.

"We are in our spring sowing period, and at the moment it has been done on 500,000 hectares, which is a little ahead of last year; we are working according to the weather," he said.

This year the spring sowing area could exceed last year's by 1 million hectares, he said. "But we are balancing the sown area based on the winter sowing, and we are working within the framework of an agreed plan and structure of sown areas with all regions. There is an approved area structure, and we are moving within it. So far, we foresee no problems," he said.

Winter crops are on 6 million hectares, he said.

Answering the question whether floods in a number of regions threaten the work done in the fields, Razin said, "the weather always affects the conducting of any agro-technological operations. Last year, for example, there was a wet harvest, especially in the Central Federal District. This slowed everything down, of course. However, so far, work is going on as usual. We hope everything will be fine with the "office in the sky," the deputy minister said.

The overall labor energy-to-weight ratio of the industry is not decreasing, he said. "As for the purchase of agricultural machinery, we see that in some nomenclatures, we're up on last year, somewhere we're at the same level as last year, and somewhere we're lower, but in general the situation in terms of the ratio is normal," the deputy minister said.