1 October, Vitebsk /Olga Bogacheva - BELTA/. Sowing of winter crops has been completed in the Vitebsk region, the Agriculture and Food Committee of the Vitebsk Regional Executive Committee informed a BELTA correspondent. This year, the area sown with winter crops in the region amounted to 233 thousand hectares. The largest areas for these crops are in the Orsha, Tolochin, Verkhnedvinsk, and Glubokoye districts. The intensive work of the region's agrarians does not slow down with the completion of grain harvesting and winter crop sowing, as corn, vegetables, potatoes, and flax need to be harvested from the fields during October, and the soil needs to be prepared for next year's harvest, the regional agricultural department noted. Currently, flax harvesting is nearing completion. Work on cornfields requires acceleration, where as of October 1, 36.8 thousand hectares, or 38.4% of the area, have been harvested with a gross yield of green mass of 929 thousand tons. 73 thousand tons of potatoes have been dug with an average yield of 211.8 centners per hectare. The largest yields of this staple food are harvested by agrarians in the Polotsk (276.4 centners/ha), Tolochin (423.4 centners/ha), and Shumilino (302.6 centners/ha) districts. 28.4% of the area, or about 1.4 thousand hectares, remain to be harvested. Mass harvesting of cabbage (17.9 hectares harvested, 427.8 tons collected), beetroot (147.3 hectares and 2.2 thousand tons, respectively), and carrots (146.4 hectares, 3 thousand tons) is ongoing. Students provided significant assistance to farmers in this work in September. The region's farms have just begun plowing the fallow land: about 5% of the area has been plowed. In general, the rural workers are focused on completing all major types of autumn work by their professional holiday.-0-

BELTA