In mid-February, an “official” controlled by the occupiers disseminated a statement by the criminal “First Deputy Minister of Agriculture” of the occupiers, Alima Zaredinova, about the alleged “development of horticulture” on the occupied peninsula, including that allegedly, during the ten years of occupation, the area of Crimean gardens “almost doubled,” since allegedly “in 2014 it was a little more than 7 thousand hectares”. However, these “pre-election” fables of the Crimean Tatar collaborator about “blooming Crimean gardens” under the “sun” of the Kremlin dictatorship are quite predictably refuted by data from open sources, as well as by the reservations of the “deputy minister” himself.
Firstly, we note that the total area of gardens in Crimea is much larger than the area of fruit-bearing gardens, and when Zaredinova speaks of “more than 15 thousand hectares” of current gardens, she makes a reservation, hardly noticeable to non-specialists, that “this includes… young orchards that are not yet producing crops”. Therefore, it is even surprising that when comparing fruit-bearing gardens with the state of 2014, at a time when the total area “for gardening” in Crimea was then designated at approximately 40 thousand hectares, including nurseries, young gardens, and so on, Zaredinova announced “growth gardening” “only” doubled; with such an approach, one could lie about “triple growth”.
And, secondly, according to estimates, published in 2015 by the Crimean collaborators themselves from the Nikitsky Botanical Garden, the area of the fruit-bearing gardens, “counted” by the occupiers at the beginning of the occupation in 2014, ranged from 10 to 12 thousand hectares, but not in “7 thousand” according to Zaredinova, who, ironically, once began her career in a branch of that same Botanical Garden, and therefore actually knows real statistics quite well.
Moreover, let us recall that a fairly significant part of the Crimean gardens, especially regarding heat-loving crops, at the beginning of the occupation were registered not in agricultural enterprises, for which the occupiers had data “on hand” almost immediately, but also in “garden partnerships”, which the occupiers have not been able to fully carry to their illegal “registers” till today, and therefore for a long time they were not included in the “statistical calculation” at all. What other tales about “yield & breeding” will Zaredinova tell next, one can only guess.
