The second in the history of Belarus gross collection of flax trusts - 170 thousand tons - is expected this year

More human resources are needed to accelerate work in the fields and improve the quality of flax trusts

President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko during a visit to the Shklovsky district at the end of last week drew attention to some problems associated with the harvesting of flax. The head of state demanded strict adherence to the technology and quality work. The upswing in the country is over. If the weather had not spoiled, the work could have finished soon. Therefore, you will have to wait out the rainy days to get even more active.

Has the Dolgoun man’s sown area changed this year, how was the cultivation process, what types of crops, are there problems in the industry? That's in the SG review.

From year to year, the country’s flax farmers were tasked with obtaining 180,000 tons of trust to fully load processing. Such a figure could not be reached. The maximum until last year was 161 thousand tons. And in 2025, very favorable weather was added to the accumulated potential of the industry, and the result exceeded all expectations: almost 207 thousand tons. Therefore, the area of flax in the country was reduced. If last year there were 47.7 thousand hectares for cleaning, this year - 43.6 thousand.

On September 23, the linen trust was raised from 40 thousand hectares - 91 percent of the total area. For comparison, a year ago it was only 58 percent. Brest and Grodno regions completed the work. Vitebsk region is the northernmost. Here, linen is traditionally later sowed and removed. In addition, its areas are the largest. What is being done to speed up cleaning?

Director of Dubroven Flax Plant Sergey Krepochin said:

- We tried to ensure that the rights of the tractor driver were at the employees of all auxiliary units: firemen, watchmen, locksmiths. During cleaning, they get behind the wheel, and the number of workers in the fields increases by 30 percent. Therefore, we do not attract mechanizers of urban enterprises, we manage on our own.

The situation in OJSC “Orekhov Flax Plant” looks different.

- We have 16 of our own mechanics, additionally attracted 30 more from industrial enterprises, said Director Oleg Vishnevsky. But still work is slower than I would like. After all, the assistants first harvested grain in agricultural enterprises, and came to us only after the harvest was completed. If they all appeared at once and in the middle of the summer, then the rise of the trust would have accelerated.

Has the company tried to adopt the experience of colleagues from Dubrovno?

- We also trained all auxiliary workers on tractors, the head explained. The problem is that we lack them. There are many agricultural and industrial enterprises around the flax plant. Therefore, there is a shortage of personnel.

There is a problem inherent in the entire flax industry. Rounding of grated linen was carried out only in half of the area.

- If the linen is not wrapped at least once, its treatment will go unevenly: from above it is better, from below it is worse. This will negatively affect the quality of the trust, and then the fiber, said Ivan Golub, director of the Flax Institute. There are a lot of wrapping techniques in the country. In most cases, this operation is not performed due to a lack of mechanics. Therefore, flax mills need to attract them more from urban enterprises.

The Institute is working on another way to improve the quality of the trust. Here, for the second year, experiments were conducted on the cultivation of flax with sowing of herbs, so that flax was healed not on bare ground, but on the litter, Alexander Snezhinsky, deputy director of the Institute of flax for scientific work, shared:

- The results show: with conventional technology, the trust is numbered 1.25, and the one lined on the grass is 1.50 - 1.75. This is due to the fact that the grass during the extraction of flax breaks through its tape, moisture and microorganisms are better distributed across all layers. Even without wrapping the trust will be better in quality than being raised from the ground. After confirming the results, we will develop recommendations for growing flax with sowing grass on a large scale.

It should be noted that some problems did not significantly affect the total flax harvest.

“Gross levy is expected to be the second largest after 2025 – about 170 thousand tons of trust,” said Sergey Bobrovsky, head of the flax production department of the Ministry of Agriculture and Food. In addition, due to the abundant harvest last year, there are another 55 thousand tons of trust residues. This means that we again have more raw materials than the full load of factories.

According to the expert, almost all the flax could be removed by the end of this week. But the rains stopped working. After the weekend weather forecasters promise to improve the weather. In a couple of days after the cessation of precipitation, it will be possible to start raising the trust again and complete the process in the early days of October.

gedroiz@sb.by

Photo on the announcement: archive "SB"