Flax and nettles

Flax, nettle, hemp

Nettle is one of the oldest fibrous plants that man has learned to process. Yarn for fabric was made from long and durable nettle fibers. The fabric was used for sewing clothes, sails and bags. Carpets were woven from nettles, ropes were made, and fishing nets were woven. The Ugric peoples in Siberia used nettles in weaving until the twentieth century. Currently, nettle weaving is one of the forgotten crafts that enthusiasts are reviving.

If nettles do not need to be sown, they do not need to be cared for, then technical crops need care. Flax and hemp have long been sown on Siberian arable land. Flax seed was used to squeeze oil, and canvas, fishing nets and ropes were made from fiber. Hemp was used to produce seed, as well as hemp, which was used to make ropes. In 1900, in the Tobolsk province, there were more than 1 million dessiatines of land under grain crops, while potatoes, hemp and flax occupied little land, flax, for example, 20.5 thousand dessiatines.

Intensive development of flax farming was observed after the Great Patriotic War. In the Tyumen region, almost 4% of the crops were occupied by industrial crops. The first place belonged to curly flax (60%), less fiber flax was sown (30%). In some areas in the south of the region, cannabis was sown. The acreage increased, the yield increased, all this led to the opening of 9 flax processing plants and 2 flax plants. The main areas for sowing and processing flax were Aromashevsky, Vikulovsky, Kazansky, Omutinsky, Tobolsk, Tyumen, Yalutorovsky, Yarkovsky. In the post-perestroika period, many enterprises were closed, and now flax farming in the Tyumen region is being revived.

Oilseeds

Oilseeds are plants that are grown to produce fatty oils. These include sunflower, soy, peanuts, rapeseed, mustard, ginger, etc. The seeds of some plants are raw materials for the oil and fat industry.

In the second half of the XIX — early XX century, sunflower seeds began to be sown en masse in Western Siberia, which was associated with the resettlement movement. By the middle of the twentieth century, sunflower began to occupy 31% of industrial crops in the fields. Over 70% of sunflowers were sown in Kulunda and adjacent areas of the Steppe Altai, 13% were sown in the Omsk region, and the rest was grown in the Middle Tributary. For Western Siberia, local precocious sunflower varieties were bred (Barnaul-2151, etc.). In the Pritobolsky forest-steppe and the Middle Irtysh region, other varieties were sown (Saratov-169, Shortansky-41). Sunflower was of great importance in Western Siberia: it provided raw materials for large oil mills and was an important silage crop; it was used as a backstage with which snow retention was carried out.

Another oilseed crop was ginger. It occupied 30% of all industrial crops. Ginger was cultivated in the same place as sunflower, as well as in the northern part of Western Siberia, in the Pritobolsky forest-steppe.

Currently, oilseeds are grown mainly in the south of Western Siberia, in Altai. The Altai Territory has been holding the leadership in shipments abroad for the last five years by a large margin. Today, hundreds of thousands of hectares are occupied in Altai by crops of soybeans, rapeseed, flax (once niche crops) and, of course, sunflower. The region tops the list of the main exporters of sunflower, flax, soybeans, mustard and other crops, second only to the Krasnoyarsk Territory in rapeseed.