The harvest campaign in East Kazakhstan Region is nearing completion. Farmers harvested 485,200 tonnes of oilseed crops this year, most of them sunflower. The region also produced 428,700 tonnes of grain and legume crops.
Zhannat Kosherova, deputy head of the East Kazakhstan Region Agriculture Department, announced the figures at a briefing held by the Regional Communications Service.
The region’s sown area exceeded 611,000 hectares, an increase of 5,500 hectares from last year. Heat and insufficient rainfall during the growing season affected grain yields: the average was 17.4 centners per hectare, compared with 20.3 centners a year earlier.
The oilseed harvest totalled 485,200 tonnes, including 456,780 tonnes of sunflower. The average yield was 19.3 centners per hectare.
To keep harvesting on schedule, farms prepared their fields and machinery in advance and applied 69,000 tonnes of mineral fertilisers. Farmers received 19,000 tonnes of discounted diesel fuel for fieldwork, with a further 5,300 tonnes allocated for grain drying. Grain storage facilities in the region, including the capacity of processing enterprises, can hold 829,000 tonnes.
State support for agriculture is continuing. Under the Ken Dala 2 programme, 22.2 billion tenge was allocated for spring fieldwork and harvesting. Since the start of the year, agricultural producers have leased 503 units of machinery and equipment through KazAgroFinance, at a total cost of 17.7 billion tenge.
A further 3.4 billion tenge was allocated to subsidise crop production. The funding supports seed production, reduces the cost of fertilisers and pesticides, and compensates for the cost of supplying irrigation water.
