Azerbaijan will be able to fully provide itself with rice by 2025, Agriculture Minister Heydar Asadov said Feb. 17 at an expanded meeting of the ministry’s board.
Presently, Azerbaijan’s annual demand in rice is 40,000 tons, he added. “Last year, we spent $36 million on rice imports,” Asadov said.
The harvest of rice is planned to be increased to 40,000 tons per year in Azerbaijan, according to the State Program for Rice-growing Development in Azerbaijan in 2018-2025, recently approved by President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev.
According to the program, the area for rice planting is planned to be increased to 10,000 hectares, and the productivity up to 40 centners per hectare in Azerbaijan.
The program says that in 2016, the planting area for rice was 2,500 hectares and the harvest amounted to 5,600 tons in the country. In 2017, the sown area was increased to 5,100 hectares, and harvesting – to 15,900 tons. The productivity totaled 31.1 centners per hectare. The state program’s implementation will increase the rice harvest by more than 2.5 times by 2025.
