In Grodno region removed from the fields more than 40% of the sugar beet crop

Farms of the Grodno region will have to free more than 30 thousand hectares of cultivated sweet root crops. Now more than 40 percent of the crop (almost 12 thousand hectares) has been brought from the fields, 686,000 tons of sugar beet have been dug up. The average yield is 578 centners per hectare, and this is still the best result in the country. Heavy trucks with beets go to the country's oldest sugar plant in Skidel.

This year, Skidel Sugar Plant plans to process more than 1.2 million tons of sweet root crop. Cagats on concrete fields grow hour by hour, and in the walls of the plant, they are simultaneously processed. Deputy General Director for Raw Materials Olga Belko suggests assessing the scale of the workpiece:

- On Friday morning, 400,000 tons of raw materials were received, which is more than 30 percent of the expected volume. Raw materials from the fields began to arrive more than a month ago, and every day the process is only gaining momentum. We take up to 10 thousand tons of beets a day, and from mid-October, when mass harvesting begins, the figure will reach 14 thousand tons. Then we will start storing raw materials. The company processes up to 8.5 thousand tons of beets in net weight per day.

The raw materials zone of the plant is 10 districts of the Grodno region, the maximum delivery radius is 160 kilometers. The largest supplier is Grodno district, where the culture of beet cultivation is high, Olga Belko notes:

- Over the years, delivery schedules have worked to the smallest detail. When drafting them, meetings are necessarily held in district executive committees, where heads of farms are present, and at this stage details are discussed. There are areas where they want to pass the grown crop as quickly as possible in order to free up fields for sowing winter crops. All raw materials are delivered only by road, passes through a testing laboratory, where the contamination and sugar content of beets is determined. Based on these indicators, calculations are made with farms.

Olga Belko says that if the gross harvest is important for farms, then sugar content is in the first place for processors:

The production of sugar depends on its content in the root crop. Currently, according to the tests of the raw materials laboratory, this figure is higher than 16 and even 17 percent, but if we take the average from the beginning of the workpiece, then we have not yet reached the base. Many agricultural organizations received a decent harvest, so we will take as much as our partners have grown. Last year, the acceptance was completed on January 22, this year we plan to complete the process in the first decade of January. During the harvest season, 60 people work at the beet receiving point of the enterprise. Basically, these are operators of piping machines, weighers, quality controllers, chemical analysis technicians, auxiliary workers. Employees of the citric acid workshop, which at this time is not yet producing products, pensioners of the enterprise, who want to work extra.

On the day of our arrival, the remnants of beets in the kagatka field amounted to 40 thousand tons, which will provide the enterprise with work for four or five days. The processing process does not stop for a minute. The height of the beet mountains reaches the height of a five-storey house, and the width is more than 30 meters. For their formation are responsible piping machines. One of these is managed by Ruslan Litvin. In the off-season, he is involved in various types of work, but in the autumn, a hot time begins for him. Says:

- The third season I work on a piercing machine of Belarusian production. The technique is satisfied: high-performance, comfortable, quiet compared to others. I am from Grodno, the city-forming enterprise of the satellite city settled on the advice of my wife, she comes from Skidel. At the factory, everyone gets decent money for their work. My job seems simple: put beets in a kagat, what's the big deal? But it's only at first glance. Here it is important to work harmoniously in tandem with a tractor driver: from the cabin it is not always clear where to direct root crops. My partner commands, left-right, and I execute. The main thing is not to rush, to do the work qualitatively.

The handyman has been working at the Skidel sugar plant for more than 10 years, so the harvesting process knows from and to: - We always wait for the high season, when raw materials begin to flow to the plant in large quantities. The harvest this year is excellent, I see root crops, which means that we will produce many products of excellent quality. I am proud to be involved in ensuring food security. We always choose our product in the store.