DUSHANBE, March 3, 2010, Asia-Plus  -- Tajik farmers have launched the spring grain-sowing campaign.

According to the Ministry of Agriculture (MoA), they plan to plant grains on some 120,000 hectares of farmland this spring.  To-date, they have planted gains on more than 31,000 hectares, which is 26 percent of the target.

In all, more than 200,000 hectares of farmland have been allocated to grains, including winter grain crops, in Tajikistan this year.  We will recall that more than 400,000 hectares were allocated to grains in 2009.

The source at a MoA justified this considerable reduction in areas under gains by saying that released areas would be sown with export agricultural crops.