Agriculture

The region is traditionally agricultural, producing relatively vast quantities of bread and fodder wheat, barley, oil sunflower, grain and silage maize, grapes, essential oil crops, etc. However the growing of grain crops takes priority. Soil and climatic conditions and traditions are all favourable for growing wheat, barley, triticale, and rye. Wheat and barley are traditionally grown in lowland areas. Stara Zagora, Opan, Radnevo, Galabovo, and Bratya Daskalovi are the most important regions where bread wheat and barley are grown. Rye and triticale in turn are grown in the foothill regions of Pavel Banya, Kazanlak and Maglizh.

The following number of organizational structures was employed in the 2005 agriculture campaign: 136 agricultural cooperatives; 7 agricultural private associations; 190 private farmers; 12 contract work companies; 8 grain depositories; 10 of larger mills; 19 processing and canning factories; and 10 essential-oil crops distilleries.

The profile of sowed areas over the past 5 years in the Stara Zagora region reveals that bread wheat has had the largest share thereof, with 70% of the total sowed with wheat each autumn, followed by winter barley. However, barley sowed areas tend to decrease, giving way to the increasing number of areas sowed with wheat.


The analyses of autumn grown crops unveils relatively, albeit fluctuating in the years, sustained yields, with the largest wheat yield reported in 2004, while the average wheat yield over 1999 - 2005 period reported slightly over 300 kg per dca. Barley yields were highest in 2001 and 2002, having reported average yields also slightly over 300kg per dca. The relatively lower barley yield reported in 2003 cannot affect adversely the overall yield estimated over the last 5 years, as it had its own reasons for this, such as the crop frosting as a result of unusually low temperatures.