Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko spokes about the targets to aim for in harvest as he honored best agricultural workers in a ceremony in Minsk on 18 November, BelTA has learned. The president noted that this year Belarus had a record high harvest of more than 10.5 million tonnes of grain. "This is almost one and a half million more than last year," he said. First of all, Aleksandr Lukashenko congratulated the leaders: Minsk Oblast, Grodno Oblast, Brest Oblast. 21 districts of the country finished the season with a harvest of more than 100,000 tonnes. Among the agricultural enterprises the leaders are Gastellovskoye (Minsk District), Pravda-Agro, a subsidiary of the agricultural complex Dzerzhinsky, Grodno cooperative and Kremko cooperative (Grodno District). "All regions have significantly increased the production of winter barley. The planting areas were increased thanks to the use of the domestic variety. The harvest exceeded 300,000 tonnes, which is twice as much as last year. We need to double next year too. We had a good harvest of oilseeds, about a million tonnes. This amount is enough to provide the domestic market with vegetable oil. We maintain momentum in the production of potatoes, vegetables, fruit and berries,” the president stated. “The garden using intensive technologies in the Senko agricultural enterprise (Grodno District) yielded over a thousand tonnes of fruit from an area of just 26 hectares. Farmers of Brest Oblast were able to get a harvest of more than 50 tonnes per hectare. There are many such examples across the country." There were also personal bests, the head of state noted. "There are many of them, but I will highlight the thing that is most telling, in my opinion. The crew consisting of Sergei Maksimets from the joint-stock company Krutogorye-Petkovichi (Dzerzhinsky District) and Vasily Zur, a worker with Gomselmash, harvested over 6,000 tonnes of grain using the domestic combine harvester Polesye, leaving behind the vaunted CLAAS and John Deere harvesters. Imagine that these are two trains of bread. One crew. This is the result we should aim for,” Aleksandr Lukashenko said.
