Ukraine annually loses 6 million tons of grain or $ 1 billion due to lack of agricultural machinery, agricultural policy and food minister Mykola Prysiazhniuk said at the meeting on issues of agricultural machinery, ForUm correspondent reports.
"In order to achieve high performance, particularly in crop production - 80 million tons of grain a year, there are scientific calculations, climatic and resource potential, but re-equipment is necessary. The most difficult and the most underfunded question is the presence of combine harvesters," the minister said and added that Ukrainian farmers should be provided with equipment of domestic production, as well as with the technique of multi-brand foreign companies assembling.
In addition, according to Prysiazhniuk, farmers need tractors, as their fleet is obsolete by 70% and consists of cars, which are more than 20 years old.
In turn, Prime Minister Mykola Azarov said that the need for tractors makes up 400 thousand units. "The Kharkov tractor plant, if I’m not mistaken, produces 3 thousand units a year. If we rely on the capabilities of our tractor plant, we will need 100 years to update your base," he said.
In turn, Prysiazhniuk added that to solve this problem, it is needed not only to enhance the production of tractors in Ukraine, as well as to create cooperative machine-tractor stations.
In addition, the minister considers it appropriate to restrict the import of pre-owned agricultural machinery from abroad.
According to Prysiazhniuk, domestic farmers are planned to be provided with 2.5 million harvesters and 12.8 thousand tractors of multi-brand assembling.
