By KYIV. May 4 (Interfax-Ukraine) – In 2023, Agrotrade will allocate 200 hectares for sowing industrial hemp in Chernihiv region for the first time, the agrarian group reported on Facebook.
“This is a new experience for us, for which we have been diligently preparing. We went to study, mastered different approaches, technologies and solutions. We planned to sow cannabis two years ago, but decided not to start a new crop in a crisis year, and then the war interfered with the plans,” the agricultural holding explained.
According to the agrarian group, the production of technical hemp had to obtain a special license. For sowing, seeds of domestic selection will be used. During the season, field trials of various herbicide protection systems will be conducted, for which 27 demo plots have been allocated.
Agrotrade intends to grow technical hemp both for seeds and for processing.
“Preliminarily, there are plans to implement both one and the other, because today the market for processing the fiber itself is developed in Europe, many enterprises are interested in raw materials, for example, for hemp oil,” the agricultural holding emphasized.
The first harvest of cannabis is scheduled for the end of August.
Based on the results of the demo tests, the agricultural holding intends to scale up the hemp business, as it is confident in the competitiveness of this industry after the victory.
Agrotrade is a vertically integrated holding of a full agro-industrial cycle (production, processing, storage and trade of agricultural products). It processes more than 70,000 hectares of land in Chernihiv, Sumy, Poltava and Kharkiv regions. Profile crops are sunflower, corn, winter wheat, soybeans and rapeseed. It has its own network of elevators with a one-time storage capacity of 570,000 tonnes.
