The President paid increased attention to agricultural facilities as part of the inspection tour of the Slobodzeya district. The Head of the district Vasily Tishchenko, accompanying the President, recalled that the area of agricultural land in Slobodzeya exceeds 60 thousand hectares. Almost 54000 hectares are arable land, one and a half thousand are occupied by perennial plantations. 26,5 thousand hectares have been sown with winter wheat. The plan for planting grain and leguminous crops (7563 hectares) was overfulfilled by 16%. Slobodzeya district from a climatic point of view is one of the driest in the republic. Special attention is paid to the issue of providing land with irrigation. Almost seven dozen local farmers have signed contracts for the irrigation of lands with a total area of 11.5 thousand hectares this year. Two thousand hectares are served by the enterprises' own pumping stations. The regional reclamation coverage will be 14000 hectares by the end of the year.
One of the Slobodzeya agricultural firms that is gradually increasing irrigation is Expedition Agro. They have been in the agricultural business for ten years. The land area is almost 3700 hectares. 1.5 thousand hectares of land are irrigated. The network was laid on their own. The Head of the enterprise Nikolay Dobran in an interview with the President said that a weighty motivating argument is the fixed cost of irrigation water - 70 kopecks. This price is much lower than the cost price. The difference is covered by the state. It was assumed that the norm would be in effect for a couple of years almost five years ago when Vadim Krasnoselsky after discussing this issue with farmers came up with an initiative to reduce and freeze this tariff. It was prolonged. Irrigation water still costs farmers 70 kopecks per cubic meter.
Speaking about the partnership essence of relations between the state and agricultural business, Vadim Krasnoselsky also noted that the costs of expanding the reclamation complex depend on the number of participants in this process: the more there are, the more profitable it is for everyone to introduce an irrigation system. The President expressed confidence that with the maximum coverage of farmland by the irrigation system, a decade later, the situation in the agriculture of Pridnestrovie and the economy as a whole will radically change – naturally, for the better.
