Prometey

In 1992, Konashenkov A.A. created the Prometheus Farm for the purpose of growing vegetables and grain crops. The farm was created from scratch. They received 11 hectares of land from the state for ownership, and 64 more hectares for rent that have not been used by the state farm for a long time. With credit funds, the young farmer purchased two tractors, a combine harvester "Niva", a cultivator, a seeder and a plow. Unfortunately, this technique was not new, so it caused a lot of trouble. A quarter of a century later, the farm uses 209 hectares of land! Additionally, another 70 hectares have been received, which will be introduced into crop rotation this year. Today, the farm has 6 tractors and all the necessary trailed equipment for cultivating the land. The plant—growing direction of Prometheus is the production of vegetables, potatoes, grain, hay, haylage. For the last 4 years, a good harvest of strawberries has also been harvested here. Since 2014, the farm has also been engaged in fattening cattle for meat - this is justified, because it is easy to provide the feed base yourself. At our base, which is located in Podoleshye, since the end of June, you can always buy potatoes, vegetables, grain, hay." Every 3 years, the farm renews potato varieties. "It's no secret that both vegetables and potatoes cannot be grown without the use of pesticides. But we maintain strict crop rotation and spatial isolation of fields. This made it possible to reduce the number of pesticide treatments to a minimum when growing products, and we do not use poisons at all in early production." In 1992, a cooperation agreement was signed between Prometheus and Velikiye Luki Agricultural Academy. The closest relations developed with the Department of Agrochemistry, which was headed at that time by the former director of the state farm "Gdovsky" I.A. Ivanov. Since then, Prometheus has been a reference point for the department. More than fifty students of the Institute have completed practical training in its fields. According to the received research materials, more than 20 theses were written, three candidate's and one doctoral work were defended Prometheus Farm also cooperates with the Agrophysical Institute on precision agriculture. Thanks to this cooperation, an electronic agrochemical map of farm fields has been created, the only one in the region!