Belgorod residents are ready to increase vegetable production

On September 8, Deputy Governor of the region - HEAD of the Department of Agro-industrial Complex and Reproduction of the Environment of the Belgorod Region Yulia Shchedrina took part in a meeting held at the Ministry of Agriculture of RUSSIA.

Speaking during the meeting, Yulia Shchedrina reported on the state of affairs with the production of vegetables in the Belgorod region, primarily the "borscht set", and plans to increase it. She said that today the provision of the population of the region with locally produced vegetables in accordance with medical standards in general for the group of vegetables "borscht set" is 66% of the need, including cabbage - 77%, carrots - 48%, beetroot - 53% and onion - 83%.

At the same time, she noted that, having deeply analyzed the situation, the leadership of the Belgorod region decided on reserves and is ready to increase the production of open ground vegetables in small farms by at least three times by 2025.

Several factors will contribute to this. First of all, the priority provision of grants to farms within the framework of the Agrostartup and Development of Family Farms support programs for greenhouse production and the cultivation of vegetables of the “borscht set” in the open field, and family farms and cooperatives - to create capacities for storage, packaging and processing vegetables. A good incentive will be subsidies from the regional budget to reimburse part of the costs to small businesses for the modernization of greenhouses, the supply of electricity and gas for lighting and heating, as well as part of the costs of land reclamation when growing vegetables of the “borscht set” in open ground. These payments are planned to be made from 2022.

According to Yulia Shchedrina, the majority of farms and cooperative farms are ready to increase the volume of vegetable production if they can expand the cultivation area. Therefore, the department of agro-industrial complex and environmental reproduction of the region, together with the department of property and land relations of the region, is working on the issue of forming a land fund for K (F) Kh and agricultural cooperatives planning to increase vegetable production.

In order to regulate the sale and distribution of vegetables, including ensuring supplies from other regions, distribution channels are being developed in the region, greenhouses and vegetable stores are being modernized, and a network of specialized logistics bushes is being created.

Thus, within the framework of the Roadmap for providing vegetable products to the population of the Belgorod region, approved by the head of the region Vyacheslav Gladkov, in August the heads of administrations of municipal districts and urban districts formed lists of private farms and entrepreneurs who wish to sell the surplus of vegetables grown by them, identifying agricultural consumer cooperatives, which will purchase, store and process these products.

In order to stimulate the purchase and storage of vegetables by cooperatives and provide them with working capital for these purposes, the department came up with a proposal to the Belgorod Regional Fund for Supporting Small and Medium-Sized Businesses to include producers of greenhouse vegetables and vegetables of the "borscht set" in the list of priority areas of the Fund to reduce the interest rate on operating microloans from 6.5% to 3.25% per annum, as well as the development of new loan products for the purchase, storage, packaging and processing of vegetables.