State Grain Fund begins accepting grain
By Amina Nazarli
The State Agency for Material Reserves under Azerbaijan’s Emergency Situations Ministry has announced that it will admit high-quality domestically-produced grain for the country’s State Grain Fund.
Starting from July 1, the State Grain Fund has begun to purchase grain for 250 manats ($238) per ton, according to the ministry.
The grain submitted to the fund should meet several requirements: Grain-unit should not be less than 750 grams/ litres; Weeds (for wheat) should not exceed two percent; Feed mix should not be over five percent; moisture for all plants should be not more than 13 percent; Gluten for third-grade wheat should not be less than 23 percent, while the quality of gluten should be of the first or second group, the quality of stickiness must be 65-85. Vitreous for third-grade wheat must be between 40 and 45 percent.
Grain that emits a bad odor, tastes bad, contains or has been damaged by wormwood, or is contaminated with black fungus horns-parasite, and other storage pests is forbidden.
Products not meeting these requirements, and not holding a quality certificate from accredited laboratories, will not be accepted. It is recommended that the grain be transported by tip trucks.
Grain is the primary and oldest agricultural product in Azerbaijan.
Irrigated grain is planted in the lowland regions of Azerbaijan, while the highlands and foothills of the country are sown with grain without irrigation.
Azerbaijan with a population over 9.6 million is able to meet 75 percent of its grain demand and imports only 25 percent of its grain from abroad, mainly from Kazakhstan and Russia.
The country’s annual demand for grain is three million tons, 1.65 million tons of which accounted for by wheat.
Azerbaijan produced about 2.4 million tons of grain from January to November 2014. An average of 24 quintals of grain was harvested per hectare.
In June 2014, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev signed an executive order for extra support to agricultural producers. The document envisages providing the agricultural producers with grain harvest combines.
Based on the order, the Agrolizing Open Joint Stock Company was allocated 15 million manats from the Azerbaijani President's Reserve Fund, as stipulated in the State Budget for 2014.
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Amina Nazarli is AzerNews’ staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @amina_nazarli
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