The first crew of combine harvester operators to reach a thousand tonnes were honoured today in the Vitebsk region.

August 1, Vitebsk / Olga Bogacheva - BELTA /. The first crew of combine harvesters to reach the thousand-tonne mark was honoured today in the Vitebsk region, Sergey Dogel, Chairman of the Vitebsk Regional Executive Committee's Committee for Agriculture and Food, told a BELTA correspondent.

The leaders of this year's harvest are representatives of the Orsha district - the crew of the agricultural production cooperative "Larinovka" consisting of senior combine operator N. Zakharenko and his assistant S. Katkovsky. On the "Lexion-580" combine harvester, their team was the first in the region to thresh a thousand tonnes of grain. In 2010, this crew won the republican competition "Dazhynki-2010".

Representatives of local authorities, trade union organisations, and the farm's management congratulated the machine operators on overcoming the symbolic milestone.

As of the morning of August 1, a total of 109 thousand hectares of grain crops had been harvested in the Vitebsk region, or 23.4% of the cultivated areas. 308 thousand tonnes of grain were threshed with an average yield of 28.1 centners per hectare. The best pace in the current harvesting campaign was achieved by the Verkhnedvinsk (30.9% of areas harvested, average yield 33 centners/ha), Beshenkovichi (26.3%, 32.3 centners/ha), Dubrovno (23.9%, 31.7 centners/ha), and Orsha (25.4%, 34 centners/ha) districts. -0-