"Farmers' Parliament" meets with members of the Saeima Sustainable Development Committee

On Wednesday, May 27, Maira Dzelzkalēja, Deputy Chairwoman of the Board of the Association "Farmers' Saeima", and agricultural policy expert Mārtiņš Trons participated in a meeting of the Saeima Sustainable Development Committee, where they introduced the deputies to current agricultural issues and strategic settings for the coming years.
Representatives of the “Farmers’ Assembly” (ZSA), at the invitation of the Sustainable Development Commission, presented the organization’s vision of the current situation in the agricultural sector, as well as emphasized the main issues to be addressed. In recent years, the agricultural sector has been developing and stabilizing. Latvia’s agricultural export balance has been positive since 2012, generating a contribution of ~111 million EUR. However, there are still great opportunities for the development and economic growth of the sector, involving currently unused agricultural land resources in production.
One of Latvia's basic and main production resources is LAND, therefore, we called for creating an environment for the most efficient and sustainable use of land, while at the same time taking care of increasing the level of well-being of both the farmer and any resident of Latvia.
We highlighted limiting the increase in real estate taxes as one of the most pressing issues to be addressed in the near future. Land is a basic resource in agricultural production, and as the tax burden continues to increase by an average of 15-25% per year, the cost of production will also increase and our competitiveness in the European market will decrease.
We also called for not supporting the taxation of EU support payments planned for 2017 with corporate and personal income tax, as Latvia's direct payments still lag significantly behind the European average payments and the payments of neighboring countries, such as Lithuania.
In order to preserve the quality of reclaimed land, we asked the deputies to continue working on relevant laws to prohibit the cultivation of forests, trees, shrub stands and tree plantations with a drainage system on reclaimed agricultural land. In addition, we called for at least 3 million EUR to be allocated in the state budget each year for the maintenance of national reclamation systems.
The EU's new climate policy and its ambitious targets were a particular topic of discussion. This policy stops any future development of Latvia's agricultural sector. At the same time, we have the opportunity to use the land resources at our disposal, the opportunity to invest in modern advanced technologies, production methods, and promote Latvia's economic growth.
We focused on eliminating shortcomings in the data recording system, namely the need to evaluate and combine different types of data recording systems. For example, statistics currently operate with 80 thousand farmers, but only a little over 20 thousand producers have registered with the SRS. There would be benefits for everyone - the state would certainly obtain more correct information for policy and development planning. In turn, producers could concentrate more on their main task - production, and spend less time filling out various papers and forms. Currently, in many cases, similar information needs to be provided to different institutions.
"Such meetings with policymakers are very useful for exchanging views and building understanding on issues important to the sector. We are pleased with the great interest of the deputies and their active involvement in the discussion. We hope that in the near future we will return to the Saeima for an in-depth discussion on the challenges of climate policy," comments M. Dzelzkalēja.