Armenia’s Ministry of Agriculture assures farmers that low temperature and snowfalls that started a day ago will not affect the crops yield in the Ararat Valley.

This year an unprecedented warm winter was registered in Armenia with +10C (50F) in the middle of January, meanwhile, on Monday the temperature dropped down to 0C and -1C (30F).

“Two days ago our specialists in the vegetation sector visited the villages in the Ararat Valley and Armavir to give instructions on how to avoid possible frostbite. Currently, there is no need to get worried about it,” Minister of Agriculture of Armenia Gerasim Alaverdyan said on Tuesday, at a press conference dedicated to the (agricultural) events planned for 2010.

Yesterday (January 25) Hrachya Berberyan, President of the Agrarian-Peasant Union of Armenia, told ArmeniaNow that the warm winter resulted in early vegetation and budding of almost all fruit-trees in the Ararat Valley without exception (cherry-tress, peach-trees, apricot-trees, and some sorts of apple-trees).

“And if it snows in the nearest future, and later if it gets colder, as foreseen, registering 10-12C (50-53.6F) cold, then the harvest may be seriously damaged,” Berberyan said.

Even though the minister admits that the vegetation period of fruit-trees started a month earlier this year, he says that the trees are still “in hibernation.”

“Now it is January, the fruit-trees are mainly sleeping, and if such weather remains unchanged, there will be no need to worry. But if the weather gets warmer, then there will be a frostbite danger,” Alaverdyan says.

Ashot Khachatryan, a villager in the Ararat Valley, told ArmeniaNow that, for example, the rind of apricot trees had already reddened, and the trees had been set into a ‘working’ mode.”

The minister also reported about the programs to be realized in prioritized villages in 2010, according to which this year, thanks to the development of sugar beet production, the state budget will receive an additional 16 billion drams (about $42 million), and the development of sheep-breeding – more than 3 billion drams (about $8 million).