This highlighted the Minister of Agriculture and Food Prof. Dimitar Grekov in a Sunday interview for the Bulgarian National Radio. He informed that about 25 thousand hectares of land sown with wheat in Bulgaria have been fully destroyed by the recent heavy rains, as they will yield no grain. Grekov announced that Bulgaria had anticipated a harvest of 5 million tons of bread wheat, the best yield in 8-9 years, prior to the floods.
He assured that Bulgaria would not experience a shortage of bread wheat as a result of the heavy rain, adding that wheat prices were expected to increase due to the extra costs of farmers for drying the wheat after collecting it.
At the same time, the Minister said that the farmers would suffer losses, although subsidies have been received on time, invested a lot of money during the year and took care well for their crops in order to get a very good harvest, but natural disasters are difficult to cope with. Minister Grekov stressed that now a full mobilization of people and machines is necessary to be made as soon as possible in order to collect grain, taking into account that it would most probably be impossible for any agricultural machines to enter the plots over the next week due to the flooding.
Minister Grekov announced that the consultative council on grain would hold a meeting to discuss the damage estimates and urged farmers to declare the affected areas at the local Agriculture directorates.
The Minister also assured that the IRRIGATION SYSTEMS continues to fulfill its functions of protecting the population and harvest of the harmful water effects from the dams of national importance.
The Minister pointed out that Executive Hail Suppression Agency has worked very actively throughout the year and reminded that there were many unprotected territories in the country which were not included in the overall hail suppression activity.