The sunflower seed yield this year is projected to be 1.5-1.7 tonnes per hectare. In 2012, the average harvest was 1 tonne per hectare. Minister of Agriculture and Food Industry Vasile Bumacov has told IPN that the farmers sowed over 200,000 hectares with sunflower.
The authorities are concerned about the fact that the people choose to cultivate sunflower on very large areas, but this plant drains the soil and extracts a lot of nutritive elements from it. The Ministry is making effort to convince the people to grow sunflower on smaller areas.
Sowing sunflower in one and the same place is recommended once in five years. The cultivation of sunflower in excess started after the farmland was parceled out. Crop rotation has been inappropriately used since then.
For the soil to recover its properties, the land on which sunflower was cultivated should be sowed with grains, lucerne or trefoil. They do not extensively use the rotation of crops in our country and sunflower can be grown in the same field for several years in a row.
As to the product, Vasile Bumacov said not all the sunflower seeds grown in Moldova are consumed on the home market. A part of the seeds is exported, while another part is used to make oil.
