State purchased 30,000 tonnes of food wheat

Baku/28.07.23/Turan: Within the framework of state purchases of local food wheat of harvest-2023, 29.800 tonnes of wheat have been purchased in Azerbaijan to date.

This is reported by the Ministry of Agriculture.

The report says that 0.300 tonnes of this food wheat were 1st class wheat, 12.200 tonnes of 2nd class wheat, and 17.300 tonnes of 3rd class wheat.

Last 19 July, President Ilham Aliyev signed a decree "On a number of measures to increase the level of self-sufficiency in food wheat".

Within the framework of the decree implementation, contracts have been signed with 28 farms in 18 regions for production of food wheat on the area of 22.400 hectares so far.

According to operational data from the companies, 22.000 hectares (98.1%) of these fields have been harvested and 111.800 tonnes have been produced. The average yield was 50.1 centners per hectare.

It is to remind that Azerbaijan produced 1.736 million tonnes of wheat in 2022. As compared to 2021, the production declined by 7.9%. Last year's wheat yield was 31.9 centners per hectare, while in 2021 - 32.9 centners.

This volume fully covers the needs for food grain and even feed. However, at the same time, more than one million tonnes of grain are imported into the country annually. Wheat imports to Azerbaijan in 2022 amounted to 1 million 292,996 thousand tonnes, which is 12.6% more than in 2021.

Long-term studies show that grain production statistics are overstated. The statistics are overstated in order to receive multi-million subsidies from the state, which go into the pockets of officials. In addition, mainly fodder grain for bread production is imported into the country.

It should be noted that the production of bread from fodder grain is impossible without the addition of chemicals, which is used by flour and bread producers. This causes serious damage to people's health. For many years Turan Agency has focused attention on the problem, but the situation does not change.

To summarise, the volume of the state grain fund reaches 750.000  tonnes. However, this volume is provided at the expense of local food grain by no more than 10 per cent. That supports the conclusions about grain production additions.-0-