Presentation: http://www.icar2010.lv/doc/agriculture_of_latvia.pdf (16Mb).
Situation in agriculture and rural area of Latvia (3,23Mb)
Agriculture is one of the most important economic sectors. It is the biggest user of agricultural land as well as the factor determining the quality of the rural landscape and environment. The development of the sector accelerates year-by-year, yet the contribution of agriculture to the gross domestic product is decreasing against the background of more rapidly growing value added of other sectors.
Despite being a relatively small country on the Baltic Sea, Latvia has a rich history in agriculture and food processing. With a population that was largely rural until 100 years ago, the Latvian people evolved a cuisine designed to be nutritious, tasty and well-suited to the lives of people who spent most of their time outdoors.
Agriculture as one of major industries of the national economy is closely connected with the development of the whole country, especially rural regions and food production. Therefore it should be viewed as an important factor of rural development and economic stability of the whole country.
Subject to soil peculiarities, all territory of Latvia is suitable for grain cultivation, yet the highest or close to the highest yields per ha are obtained in Zemgale region. Nevertheless, in each region it is possible to choose the variety/species of grain which can be successfully grown in the particular climate and soil areas. Grain production is the main crop farming sector in Latvia.
Dairy sector is one of the basic agri-food sectors in Latvia with long traditions both in dairy farming and milk processing. Milk production traditionally has been one of the main agricultural sectors in Latvia with increasing importance in recent years.
In Latvia, milk is produced by about 40 thsd. farms, which are entirely private-owned. Only a small part of milk producing farms are enterprises, the majority of farms are family farms.
During recent years, Latvian dairy-farming has demonstrated growth trends, caused by both concentration and restructuring of production of milk and dairy products. This, in turn, enables investment, higher production volumes and productivity.
The main distribution channels of dairy products include shops, wholesalers and the distribution network of retail chains. About ¼ of the dairy production is sold to foreign customers, which mostly include wholesalers and industrial consumers.
The main objective of Latvia's meat producing sectors is stabilisation of the sector and promoting market competitiveness of the products by using of a high quality genetic breeding material and decreasing production costs.
Meat production has become the main trend of sheep-breeding sector. The objective of the sheep-breeding and goat-breeding sector is to preserve the genetic variety, create of high quality flocks and develop processing and sales of their products.
Structural changes are still taking place in the pig breeding sector, concentrating production in the largest farms.
The aim of meat production is to provide the domestic market with quality meat and manufacture competitive products as well as to promote manufacture of meat products for exports. In order to achieve these objectives, it is necessary to increase the production by creating a value added for agricultural products, promoting processing and technology development.
