ASTANA, Kazakhstan, October 18. In the Karaganda region of Kazakhstan this year, the sown area amounted to 1.2 million hectares, including 1 million hectares of grain and leguminous crops, said the Minister of Agriculture, Aidarbek Saparov, Trend reports.
As Saparov noted, according to operational data as of October 16, farmers harvested 721,700 hectares of grain, or about 73 percent of the total area. With an average yield of 6.5 c/ha, 466,500 tons of grain were threshed.
At the same time, the minister noted that the government has taken the necessary measures to minimize the consequences of adverse weather conditions that affected the quality of the harvest.
According to him, preferential diesel fuel for drying grain in the amount of 62,500 tons was allocated at a reduced price.
The financial institutions of the Baiterek holding extend loans without applying penalties in relation to commodity producers.
"Through the Food Corporation, fair purchase prices have been established for farmers participating in forward purchase and commodity credit programs. The price for 3rd class wheat will be 120,000 tenge (about $251), and for 4th class wheat, 105,000 tenge (about $220)," he said.
The volume of gross agricultural output in Kazakhstan increased by 3.2 percent in the first half of 2023 and amounted to 2.1 trillion tenge (about $4.4 billion).
The growth was achieved mainly due to a 3.3 percent increase in livestock production volumes. Meat production increased by 4.5 percent (1 million tons in live weight) and milk production by 2.9 percent (3.2 million tons).
In 2022, the volume of gross agricultural production increased by 9.1 percent and amounted to 9.3 trillion tenge (about $19.5 billion). This happened due to an increase in crop production of 15 percent. Favorable weather conditions made it possible to carry out the harvesting campaign without downtime and harvest one of the best grain harvests in the last 10 years, which reached 22.8 million tons.