Forest areas in Latvia will increase dramatically in 2 months

In two months, on January 1, 2015, the provisions of Article 3, Paragraph 2 of the "Forest Law" adopted three years ago will come into force, which stipulates that a forest will be considered an area of 0.5 ha or more on which a forest stand with an average height of trees of at least five meters has formed. The entry into force of the norm will create a complex bureaucratic and financial obstacle and will hinder the return of agricultural land to production.

Juris Lazdins, Chairman of the Association "Farmers' Council": "Statistics from recent years show that the number of hectares of agricultural land used for production is increasing every year; last year, agriculture was the second fastest growing production sector in Latvia with a growth of 5.61% per annum. Almost all agricultural sectors are developing, but especially cattle production and sheep farming, which are very well suited for the development and use of new areas. The National Development Plan and the Rural Development Programme for 2014-2020 also set strategic goals to achieve the involvement of two million hectares of agricultural land in production by 2020, which would create the opportunity to produce 1.8 times more products than Latvia currently produces.

There are countless farmers in Latvia who remove vegetation from the land. This cannot be done in a year, two, or even three years. It is a years-long process, especially practiced by young farmers who want to live and work in the countryside, but already cultivated land is not so easily accessible. But from next year, norms will come into force that will significantly hinder the achievement of these goals, will make the process long, bureaucratically cumbersome and very expensive. We believe that the deadline for the entry into force of the legal norm should be extended at least until 2025.”

Farmers have repeatedly appealed to the Ministry of Agriculture to change the norm, but to date no response has been received from the Ministry of Agriculture on this issue. Also, when developing this legal norm, consultations with farmers' organizations did not take place, but the time to make changes to the conditions is very short, so the changes must be made as a matter of urgency.

Currently, forest areas in Latvia reach approximately 581.3 million hectares of the total area, and their expansion at the expense of agricultural land is an ill-considered and short-sighted action.