A new board has been elected for the Farmers' Assembly!

The Farmers' Assembly met on March 12 at its annual congress, which was held quite unusually this year – on the ZOOM platform. 142 delegates voted in the board elections and re-elected Juris Lazdiņš as the chairman of the organization. The composition of the board has changed. The following members will continue to work on the board: Maira Dzelzkalēja Burmistre, Mārtiņš Trons, Mareks Bērziņš, Elīza Ilze Malceniece, Kaspars Ādams, Edgars Putra, Mārtiņš Flaksis and Linards Selivanovičs. In turn, the candidates for the board will be Aivis Aizsilnieks and Gints Gžibovskis. The congress participants approved the board's report on its performance in 2020, as well as outlined future plans. The full report on the Farmers' Assembly's achievements in 2020 and the work plan for 2021 was sent to all members by e-mail on March 11.

Juris Lazdiņš, Chairman of the Board of the Association “Farmers' Council”: "While the new generation is still growing, I am ready to continue leading the Farmers' Parliament. Many things have been started at the moment that should be completed qualitatively. The primary tasks are to defend and represent the interests of the sector so that farmers can do what they have done for centuries – to take care of their land and livestock. Our task is to provide society with food that is accessible to all social groups, however, we are increasingly faced with populist slogans that agriculture is not needed in Latvia, because everything can be bought in stores. Instead of allowing farmers to continue their economic activities and implement the EU policy "From Farm to Fork", we are forced to direct a large part of our resources to educating the public, government and MPs about the importance of agriculture in the Latvian economy."

The participants of the congress were addressed by the Minister of Agriculture Kaspars Gerhards, who also took the time to answer questions of interest from ZSA members. Arnis Kaktiņš, Director of the Market and Public Opinion Research Center SKDS, presented the results of the study “Residents' Opinion on Various Issues Related to Latvian Agriculture, Its Environmental friendliness, and the Ecological Quality of Products”. In turn, Liene Jansone, Director of the Rural Development Support Department of the Ministry of Agriculture, presented the planned support for Latvian agriculture and rural development in 2021-2022.

The most striking quotes from the congress:

Juris Lazdins

All the circumstances and COVID-19 restrictions forced us to reorient ourselves to a different work regime, which had both its pros and cons. Pros – the flow of information is very dynamic, we can get more done because we spend less time traveling and coordinating meetings. Everything happens remotely, we can consider many more issues. However, there was a lack of face-to-face communication and sometimes the intended or desired did not work out.

With the onset of COVID-19, a crisis management working group was established, which very dynamically addressed logistics and restrictions issues directly related to agriculture. Support was obtained for all modernization projects submitted in 2019, support was obtained for partial repayment of loan interest. Very good cooperation has been established with forest owners, as recently we have observed that society is paying more and more attention to agriculture and forestry.

The work with the government has passed into a “compromise” phase. The coalition’s mutual activities are based on ultimatums and compromises, which is why many good ideas are not implemented. An example is the public initiative to ban AAL within a 1 km radius of all inhabited houses. The Saeima National Economy Committee delegated the resolution of these issues to the Ministry of Environment, Rural Development and Rural Development, which only has an indirect responsibility to resolve AAL issues, as a compromise. This is exactly how the government and MPs disorganize and distort the current order through compromise.

Maira Dzelzkalėja – Mayor

The playing field is similar in Europe, where democracy is noticeably declining and the reins are being taken over by the “green” movements and social democratic ideas. The negotiations on the Common Agricultural Policy are no longer led by the European Union (EU) Agriculture Commissioner Janusz Wojciechowski, but by the “green”-minded European Commission (EC) Vice-President Frans Timmermans, who understands very little about agriculture.

We have been working remotely for a year now, both in Latvia and in Europe. Of course, it is cheaper and the flow of information is faster, but all the information we receive is one-way and it is more difficult to express our opinion. Therefore, the decisions that are made are not sufficiently discussed with representatives of the relevant sectors.

Right now, everyone is living under the illusion that there is a lot of money because of various COVID-19 supports, but we must understand that we will not be able to borrow money forever. After 2027, there will definitely be less money left for the agricultural sector.

Two major initiatives are being promoted in Europe that threaten to significantly remove agricultural land from production – the “Biodiversity Strategy” and the Taxonomy Regulation. The Biodiversity Strategy aims to designate one third of the land in Europe as specially protected areas and 101% of the land as strictly prohibited areas by 2030. The Taxonomy Regulation, on the other hand, will directly affect banks and money lending. This regulation will stipulate that the majority of bank loans must be invested in “green” purposes. So, if you want to build a factory – invest in “green”. If Germany wants to build a factory, they will have to buy land or forests in Latvia in which to meet the “green” requirements. Therefore, we must continue to be vigilant and carefully defend the interests of our farmers. Otherwise, Latvia may remain one big nature park. Therefore, ZSA will continue to actively participate in Brussels events and express its opinion, defending the interests of our producing farmers.

In order to communicate more efficiently and effectively with the public and our members, last year we switched to a more digital form of communication, organizing several online seminars, recording podcasts and video materials on agricultural topics. Together with the Latvian Forest Owners Association, we created the Riga TV 24 program "Owner. Land. State.", in which we discussed the importance of agriculture and forests in the Latvian economy and the challenges of the sectors. Together with other people involved in the agricultural sector, we launched a project to inform the public.

Martin Throne

As a result of two years of work, we have achieved an increase in the ceiling of the ALTUM land lending program, which is now one million euros. We continue active cooperation with the Land Fund, and at the end of December we agreed that, possibly in 2021, an auction participation fee will be introduced and auction results will not be publicly available.

We are actively working in the working group established by the Ministry of Finance, in which we monitor that the TIN on agricultural land is not increased. We succeeded in not introducing an export duty on live cattle. The deadline for the reduced VAT on fresh fruits and vegetables in the amount of 5% has been extended for another two years. Together with LOSP and the store chain “Maxima” on the portal manabalss.lv we have collected 13,000 votes to further forward the proposal to the Saeima on the application of the reduced VAT also to dairy products, fresh meat, fish and eggs.

In 2020, we met with the Minister of Justice, Jānis Bordāns, to discuss cadastral value issues and the Land Registry tax. We reached an agreement that the Ministry of Justice, on its part, will put forward a proposal to reduce this tax. Negotiations have been initiated with the Ministry of Finance on personal income tax (PIT) discounts for land purchase and sale transactions, so that the full amount of PIT would not be applied to land on which there is a slum.

The issue with compensation for damage caused by geese has been resolved. Compensation will no longer be credited. de minimis in the amount, and it has also been achieved that the lethal repelling of geese will continue in 2021.

In the field of transport, we actively communicated with VAS "Latvijas dzelzceļš" so that wagons would be available for grain transportation in 2020, and with the Riga City Council so that grain cargo transports would have free access to the port in August.

We have achieved that the Saeima has made amendments to the MTPL Law so that farmers can purchase MTPL for one month for their self-propelled machines.

We worked to ensure that the European Recovery Fund (RRF) was allocated for the renovation of national land reclamation systems, forest maintenance, adaptation of agricultural machinery, and the use of biomethane, and it is also important to us that there is support for the Latraps/VAKS pea isolate plant.

The Ministry of Agriculture has supported our proposal for faster payment of the Single Area Payment (SAP) in 2021. We have put forward proposals for amendments to this year's direct payment rules to include a condition that crops applied for voluntary coupled support (VCS) should be harvested and a condition that crops sown on arable land must be at least 70% of the total number of plants.