EN 
LV Meeting of the Council and Board of the Farmers' Assembly
On Thursday, October 8, a meeting of the Council and Board of the Farmers' Assembly was held. This time, we invited organic agriculture certification institutions to the meeting to get acquainted with how certification institutions operate and what the main current challenges are. The certification institution "ENVIRONMENTAL QUALITY" was represented by the head of the organic program Juris Grīnfelds. After a comprehensive introduction to the institution's activities, discussions arose on the current issue of organic fallows. As J. Grīnfelds admitted, the legislation does not clearly define what processing of fallow is permissible and considered sufficient. Referring to the proposal made during the discussion regarding the minimum income per hectare, the representative of the certification institution admitted that he supports it in essence. At the same time, it was pointed out that support for caraway seeds has been set excessively high, while the high payment for vegetables and fruits is completely justified.
Dzintars Vīņauds, Head of the Organic Agriculture Sector at VSIA «Certification and Testing Centre», supported his colleague's opinion on the necessary minimum income. At the same time, the expert admitted that he would not support a completely ill-considered proposal on setting the maximum allowable proportion for fallow land.
Both representatives of the certification institutions acknowledged that farmers' organizations are very strongly involved in the development of regulatory enactments. Consequently, it is recommended that the Farmers' Council also be more actively involved in the development of relevant legislation.
As the meeting participants acknowledged, current legislation and controls place those who produce something on farms in the most unfavorable situation. Therefore, the position of the Farmers' Assembly is to work to prevent simple lawn mowing and reduce gaps in the legislation.
A separate part of the meeting was devoted to a discussion on the dairy industry. Andris Miglavs presented the findings of a study supported by the think tank CERTUS in the section “Agriculture: Dairy Industry”. In this case, the dairy industry was viewed as a whole, starting with milk production and ending with the sale of finished products in domestic or foreign markets. The main characteristics of the current dairy industry were high physical production potential, still low labor productivity in dairy farms, highly fragmented structures of dairy farms and dairy processing companies, low added value, dominance of mass products in the milk export structure, inappropriate market strategy of the Latvian (and also Baltic) processing industry, and increased sensitivity to inevitable crises in the global dairy market.
The expert indicated the following as the main strategically important directions:
– The need to bring milk purchase prices in Latvia closer to the EU average level, using cooperation and more targeted investment opportunities;
– The need to mitigate the impact of temporary milk market downturns on the Latvian dairy industry by using the income insurance option;
– Increasing knowledge for participants in the development of an effective dairy industry: product developers, farm managers, employees.
News in international projects
During the meeting, ZSA representative Inga Bērziņa introduced the attendees to FarmInc marketing project, completed so far.
During the project, an e-learning platform was developed, consisting of 6 modules:
What is marketing?
A good marketing plan;
Farmers markets;
Quality;
The power of territorial branding;
Sales abroad.
Each module consists of several sections that provide more detailed information about the selected topic.
Leonardo da Vinci program project FarmInc The presentation of the project's e-learning platform took place on September 30 in Koknese, and on October 1 in Tukums.
Marketing educational events, as well as materials, have been prepared within the framework of the Marketing Principles Implementation Platform (Farm Inc).
