Vegetable growers of Kazakhstan are now harvesting

Autumn is a delightful time of year. Golden crowns of trees and indescribable beauty spread across the Kazakhstani steppe. It's the right time to surrender to oblivion, emotion, and dreams. But not for farmers! Today, farmers are reaping the fruits of their labor. World of NAN on how the vegetables are being harvested.

Just a 30-minute drive from Nur-Sultan, the "Green Star" agro-firm has stretched its fields. They grow a variety of crops: corn, alfalfa, barley, melilot, Sudanka and others. Today the farmers are harvesting potatoes and carrots. At the beginning of summer these two products have become the stars of the Internet because of the sharply risen prices. And today the price of these beloved vegetables depends on the farmers' yield.

Green Star grows potatoes on 125 hectares and carrots on 25 hectares. According to the deputy director of production Kyzybek Kabdrakhmanov, they have not experienced any particular difficulties this season. "The weather was capricious, it was cold in June, then it got hot. And the rainfall this year fallen only twice. Fortunately we have all crops under artificial irrigation, so we did not feel the drought" - said Kyzybek. In addition, he noted that the irrigation rate has increased by an order of magnitude. As for the yield, the farmer said that it is lower than last year. When asked why it is lower? He answered: "Partially because we did not work hard enough, and partially because of weather conditions".

The carrot harvest is visually quite beautiful. Tall, dense, green tops contrast greatly with the autumnal nature. True, the vegetable is not given much time to show off. A tractor with a whimsical mechanism gently pulls carrots from the ground by the haulm and sends them on a conveyor, where part of the "green haircut" is separated and the fruit is loaded into a trailer. Yield of carrots on the fields of the farm can not be called low, the warehouse receives a clean product of 72 tons per hectare. Potato harvesting is less spectacular event, its yield was 35 tons per hectare. According to Kyzybek, they will soon finish harvesting potatoes, weather conditions permitting. But the harvesting of carrots will take until October 10, it is a laborious process", says the farmer.

Getting the fruit out of the ground is half the battle. It is also important to pack them and prepare them for storage. On the farm, vegetables are packaged in a very primitive manner, the vegetables are lowered on a conveyor belt and people sift out the rejects. Next, the potatoes go into storage. The warehouse is designed for 5 thousand tons of products, 4 thousand of which are potatoes, and the rest are carrots. Already from the warehouse, the vegetables will be sold to the capital and the south. The farmer did not name the price of selling the vegetables. "While the harvest is going on, we are not engaged in marketing, we are not up to it. We will harvest and then we will look at the market", - commented Kyzybek Kabdrakhmanov.

The farmer has been growing vegetables near the capital since 2013. According to him, they have no problems. "We are provided with equipment, fertilizers, pesticides and water. The only problem is the lack of labor during the harvest. But these problems are annual; every farmer faces them," Kyzybek said. The farmer has no plans to expand, because there is no land, and the volume of storage does not allow.