Hail broke the harvest in Aragatsotn district of Armenia: after drought

ArmInfo. Third of all the sown  areas of the largest village of Aragatsotn district of Armenia were  destroyed by yesterday's hail. "Hundreds of hectares of grain and  melon crops of Aragatsavan have been destroyed." Apparently, the  harvest of apricots has been lost, "head of the community Andranik  Papikyan told ArmInfo correspondent.

According to Papikyan, cultivated areas of the village of Aragatsavan  are 3 thousand hectares, of which 1 thousand were affected by strong  hail that fell out the previous evening. In addition, abundant rains  caused the descent of mudflow: the mudflow took several heads of  domestic animals. "In the evening, the villagers demanded  compensation for the damage, blocked the road, but at the moment,  together with the deputy minister of agriculture, they calculate the  losses," the head of the community said.  The village of Suser,  Aragatsotn region, suffered not so much. According to the head of the  community Gurgen Zakaryan, according to preliminary estimates, 50% of  all fruit trees suffered. However, as the head of the village  administration stated, the rest of the harvest was swept away by a  drought.

The Ministry of Agriculture of Armenia told ArmInfo that at this  stage the amount of damage from the hail is being cleared. According  to the information, Deputy Minister of Agriculture Ashot Harutyunyan  is in Aragatsotn early in the morning. The press service abstained  from mentioning how many hectares and what crops were most affected,  but assured that a working group was formed to assess the extent of  damage inflicted and the organization of operational measures in the  Ministry of Agriculture of Armenia. More detailed information was  promised to be shared later.

Meanwhile, Ministry of Agriculture still calculates the damage caused  by the early hail. As the Minister of Agriculture of Armenia Ignatiy  Arakelyan stated on June 15, the Government works in the direction of  providing financial support to the peasants in the form of a grace  period for loan repayments, or deferring the fulfillment of credit  obligations of the villagers of Armavir, Aragatsotn and Tavush  districts of the republic. However, as noted by the head of the  Armenian Ministry of Agriculture, this toolkit of assistance cannot  be a solution to the current situation, as it will not provide full  compensation for the damage suffered by the villagers. Rescue for  farmers, according to Ignatiy Arakelyan, may be the introduction of  an agricultural insurance system, as well as the installation of  anti-hail networks, which, although they are long-term and expensive  tools - often inaccessible to every farmer, but which will compensate  for the damage fully.