Kamenka, 10 March. /Novosti Pridnestrovya/. The village of Khrusovaya, Kamenka district, has the last collective farm, Lenin's Path, in the republic. With 300 permanent employees, it is engaged in both cattle breeding — with over a thousand heads of swine, over 350 heads of cattle and 500 heads of sheep, 120 beehives — and growing crop. The farm has its own forage reserves.
The head of the collective farm, Mikhail Penkovsky told prime minister Alexander Martynov and his deputy on strategic development and reforms, Alexey Tsurkan, who paid a working visit to Kamenka district, about the daily problems facing the farm.
One of the main problems is low purchasing prices for milk and meat, Penkovsky says.
«Over the past years, beef, pork and milk prices have almost doubled. Earlier, each village family used to have a cow which fed them and enabled them to survive. The republic's milk cow population has reduced tenfold today, and there are no farms in Kamenka district. This is very labour-consuming and poorly paid work. It is necessary to provide at least minimum assistance to farmers so that they will resume cattle breeding," Penkovsky believes.
Alexander Martynov noted that the relevant agencies have already started work to raise purchasing prices for milk.
«This will make it possible and profitable to raise the cattle population. In the long term, it is necessary to subsidise agriculture. It is the normal practice which is applied in the neighbouring countries. We need to seek budget funding, and we are going to work on it because agriculture is one of the leading industries in our republic," underscored Martynov.
