Farmers burn stubble fields as they don’t have money to process them

The police have recently discovered about 100 cases of setting fire to stubble fields. The farmers say they have to burn them because they do not have money to process and prepare them for the new agricultural year. The given farmers will be fined, division head at the Ministry of the Interior Vladimir Grinco said at a roundtable meeting centering on measures aimed at protecting the 2009 harvest. Grinco also said that during this year’s agricultural campaign they identified two cases of theft of seeds and two cases of theft of large quantities of chemicals. The damage caused was estimated at 500,000 lei. There were also cases when the grain fields burned. But the investigations showed the fires had not been premeditated. “The harvesting of fruit, vegetables and grapes is now at its height. The reaping of the crops of the third class will start soon. We hope that the police will be supported by the public organizations in their efforts and we will together reduce the crop thefts to a minimum. We worked out a plan of action that we could implement in concert,” Vladimir Grinco said. There are 1,186 people’s guards in the country that employ about 15,000 persons.