Slobodzeya Region, May, 20. /Novosti Pridnestrovya/. Prospects for the cultivation of hazelnut were discussed at a seminar in Slobodzeya. The participants were local farmers, employees of the Ministry of Agriculture and Nature, as well as manufacturers from Moldova and experts from Italy. At the meeting they discussed the technical side of the issue, the agro-climatic features of our region, as well as the possibilities for marketing. In Pridnestrovie, hazelnuts are practiced in the Kamensky and Slobodzeya districts.
“This is a valuable product on the market. We hope that the seminar will give a good impetus to plant lands with such an important culture as a nut. This is a very useful food product. Hazelnuts (not just a nut-tree, but graded nut) - southern crops, grow well in the Crimea, the Krasnodar Territory, and also here if good care is provided” Fedot Tsybulsky, Assistant Minister of Agriculture and Natural Resources said.
Good care is, first of all, regular watering and, of course, protection from pests. The company Bioplant has been being engaged in hazelnuts cultivation since 2011, the seedlings were brought from Germany.
“We have a hazelnut grafted on a bear nut, it gives a greater resistance to cold, and also reduces the root growth, which requires less manual labor. A prerequisite for our zone is to grow under drip irrigation. This gives an increase in yield up to 600-800 kg,” the chief agronomist of Bioplant LLC Alexander Serevko said.
Now the company has 33.5 hectares for hazelnuts, by the end of the year they plan to bring up to 40 hectares. The first harvests were already there, but so far they are too small and completely absorbed by the domestic market. Starting next year (nuts enter full fruiting in the 8-10th year), large volumes are already waiting here. If all goes well, you can get up to 2.5-3 tons of nuts from each hectare.
“On an industrial scale, this is most interesting for confectioners, but we still do not have such a volume that they are purchased from us. We are committed to the markets of Europe, but for this we need to invest a lot of work in order to grow quality products. We count on state assistance: so that at least part of the costs that we incur when purchasing saplings or equipment, pay off with some benefits, as for the producer,” Sergey Florya, head of the Bioplant company said.
Meanwhile, the sales prospects are colossal. Only the Italian market, despite the fact that the country is one of the largest producers of hazelnuts, needs 85 thousand tons annually. They said at the seminar that the buyer needs substantial volumes and good quality of the product and that was another story. And this can be done by combining manufacturers into one cluster.
“Our plan is to create a group of manufacturers. Experts say that in Moldova and Pridnestrovie it was possible to increase the planting volume to 10 thousand hectares, now it is about 650-700 hectares. Such cooperation has many advantages: even if there are small enterprises (1-3 hectares), working in a group will give them the opportunity to jointly enter the market. Having declared a lot of larger volume and better quality, one can enter the market with 500 tons and thousands of them, and put those volumes into the programs of large industrial enterprises. Moreover, we have the opportunity to do it directly, without intermediaries,” Quality Manager of the EuroAlun company, Sergey Melnik explained.
