Why are farmers and forest owners going to protest?

What are the requirements of the organizations?

Farmers and forest owners have put forward 4 demands to the Minister of the Ministry of Environment, Rural Development and Rural Development, AT Plešs.

• To change the conditions for the funding granted by the Latvian Environmental Protection Fund (hereinafter LVAF) for the activity ''Promoting Public Environmental Awareness in the Media'', ensuring that not only environmental organizations, but also competent industry scientists, representatives of the agricultural and forestry sectors are invited to create the content of the materials. This would reduce the possibility of creating pseudoscientific, hate-mongering, one-sided and divisive information.
• Re-establish the Advisory Council of Agricultural, Forestry and Environmental Organizations to initiate a meaningful dialogue between businesses and environmental organizations.
• Considering that the LVAF management has previously ignored instructions regarding false information and hate speech, review and make changes to the composition of the LVAF management.
• Apologize for the publication in which farmers are called "mass murderers". Such a publication was made with the funding of the LVAF, the chairman of the LVAF council is the Minister of the Ministry of Regional Development and Regional Development, AT Plešs. The publication was made largely because the LVAF council did not respond objectively to previous signals from farmers about the dissemination of false information, and did not want to create conditions that would promote the provision of objective and truthful information.

None of the demands are related to green courses, deforestation, field spraying, etc.; Organizations from both sectors demand that in the future, scientists and industry practitioners themselves be invited to the development process of information materials, which are paid for in the media from the Latvian Environmental Protection Fund administered by the Ministry of Regional Development and Regional Development.

Currently, within the framework of the LVAF activity ''promotion of environmental awareness in the media'', almost 1 million euros are allocated to the media every year. Unfortunately, farmers or forest owners themselves are not invited to develop the content. Latvian scientists are also not invited, for example, the Latvia University of Agriculture, the University of Latvia, Riga Technical University, independent research institutes, etc. Currently, the content of publications is developed almost exclusively in cooperation with environmental non-governmental organizations, which has been repeatedly acknowledged by the content developers themselves. For example, in the letter sent by SIA ''EHR Media Group'' as a recipient of LVAF funding, in response to the letter sent by 7 organizations, it is once again confirmed that  ''We admit that we have primarily taken into account the positions and arguments of organic farms, nature defenders and activists from the perspective of environmental issues, possibly without evaluating the explanation, justification and motivation of the opposing side (traditional farmers) for a specific form of land management.''

Such presentation of information contradicts the goals of LVAF funding. It does not educate the public, but achieves the opposite effect – society is divided, farmers and forest owners are falsely slandered, political figures are secretly promoted, and the interests of individual producer groups are lobbied.

Therefore, 7 organizations are calling on the Minister of Environment, Rural Development and Rural Development and the Chairman of the LVAF Council, Artūrs Tomas Plešas, to change the conditions for granting LVAF funding so that scientists and industry representatives are also involved in the development of content. We do not understand the minister's concerns about potential censorship that would arise from involving scientists and industry representatives in content development.

What are NOT the demands of farmers and forest owners?

In order to discredit the demands of farmers and foresters, it is often said publicly that farmers and foresters are currently standing up and protesting against the implementation of climate and environmentally friendly practices, against the Green Deal. This is not true. Such tactics are used to discredit the demands of the letter's authors. All 7 organizations that have signed the letter support the European Green Deal and its goals. We have been working on the logical implementation of the goals of the Green Deal for more than 2 years.

A false impression is being created that the farmers' and foresters' demand is to stop diverting funding to promote environmental awareness, or to introduce censorship in the media, which has also been indirectly indicated by Minister Artūrs Toms Plešs.

We emphasize that we have never called for the termination or reduction of LVAF funding, because we believe that promoting environmental awareness in society is extremely important. We strongly oppose any form of censorship or excessive involvement in media work. Our demand requires the involvement of various parties, including scientists, in the development of content, promoting the objectivity of the content. Therefore, we call on you as the media to be understanding and critical. We call on you not to rely on the recent public activities of environmental organizations and the Ministry of Environment, Rural Development and Rural Development, which tend to discredit our demand, leading to the idea that 7 organizations oppose the desire to limit one or another practice used in agriculture and forestry.

Are farmers and foresters reacting too aggressively, or is this problem a "blown up" campaign?

Environmental organizations, as well as indirectly the Minister of Environment, Rural Development and Rural Development, AT Plešs, indicate that farmers and foresters are acting destructively, not engaging in dialogue with environmentalists, and aggressively pushing for their demands to be met.

We would like to inform you that the problem with LVAF-funded publications is long-standing. In 2020, we tried to resolve it without official correspondence, indicating the problem in several meetings with the management of the Ministry of Regional Development and Regional Development. This was unsuccessful. This was followed by a meeting with the then Minister of Regional Development and Regional Development, Juris Pūcis, who understood the problem and undertook to resolve it, asking to send the farmers' claim to the LVAF Foundation Council, also indicating a specific example of an incorrect publication. This was done, and a response was received from the LVAF administration, which acknowledged that '' The Foundation's administration seemingly agrees with what is stated in the letter, that the interpretation and representation of certain facts in the aforementioned article cannot be considered a model of best practice., promising to investigate the specific publication more thoroughly. However, during this time the Minister of the Ministry of Environment, Rural Development and Rural Development changed. After almost 2 months, a response was received from the LVAF Council, indicating that after reviewing the case, no violations were found.

In order to resolve the existing problem constructively and without a loud resonance, the association "Farmers' Parliament" has been communicating with Minister Plešs' office since the beginning of April, wishing to arrange a meeting. Unfortunately, AT Plešs did not find time to meet with industry representatives on this issue.

The situation escalated when in mid-May, EHR, using LVAF funding, aired a message calling farmers ''mass murderers''. We personally contacted the Minister of the Ministry of Regional Development, Regional Development and Regional Planning and his office. Minister Plešs reacted by demanding that this message be withdrawn from the air, but still did not want to communicate about changing the conditions for granting funding in order to further reduce the possibility of publishing such blatantly defamatory and false news. On 21.05.2021, farmers' and foresters' organizations were forced to send an open letter to Minister Plešs, SIA ''EHR Media Group'' and the media. We have not received a response from Minister Plešs until today. Since there has been no reaction, farmers and foresters are forced to use other methods, including active communication in the media and social networks, to achieve proactive action in resolving this crisis.

On Wednesday, 09.06.2021, Minister AT Plešs held a press conference to discuss the current situation. We note that initially only the association ''Farmers'' and 3 organizations that support the preservation of the current funding allocation procedure were invited to the meeting. Since the problem affects a wide range of organizations, we called for the other 6 organizations that have signed the open letter to be allowed to participate. We conclude with bitterness that at this meeting, Minister TA Plešs did not talk about the demands sent by farmers and foresters. Instead, this meeting was organized as a press conference, the green course, field spraying, and other issues were discussed, creating a false impression that the demand of the signatories of the letter is not to implement the green course. Such tactics on the part of Minister Plešs caused a sharp and emotional reaction from the signatories of the letter.

Is the problem with "large, conventional" farmers?

In our opinion, Minister AT Plešs' strategy at the moment is to create the impression that farmers and foresters are opposing environmentally and climate-friendly practices, as well as to create the impression that only ''large, conventional'' farms are dissatisfied, which is not true. We provide a brief overview of the organizations that have signed the open letter of 21.05.2021.

The letter was signed by 7 organizations representing the agricultural and forestry sectors.

• Association ''Farmers'' unites 800 producing farms. It is incorrectly interpreted that the members of the ''Farmers'' Council are large, conventional farmers. There are 60% ZSA members with a turnover of up to 150,000 EUR per year, 80% with a turnover of up to 350,000 EUR per year. The median farm size is 240 hectares, which is a family farm, the farms cover all sectors of agriculture. The Farmers' Council also unites many organic farmers.
• Association ''Latvian Young Farmers Club'' unites 188 members, who are both practical young farmers and rural youth. There are no statistics available on the economic size of farms, however, in terms of area, 60% of JZK members have farms under 300 hectares, approximately 30% of all members are farmers working in the organic system.
• Association ''Latvian Forest Owners Association'' unites more than 400 members. The membership structure is very diverse, the members of the association are both individuals, who make up 72% of the total number of members, as well as forest owners' cooperatives and companies. The members manage a total of 2.02 million hectares of forests, which is 67% of all forest areas.
• Association ''Cooperation Council of Agricultural Organizations'' unites 59 agricultural organizations – both multi-sectoral and sectoral (e.g. goat farming, sheep farming, organic farming, etc.) organizations.
• In the association ''Latvian Agricultural Cooperatives Association'' There are 53 cooperative societies operating in various sectors – milk, grains, fruits, vegetables, berries, meat, forests, home production, uniting almost 5,000 farmers and forest owners.
• Association ''Farmers' Association'' unites several regional farmers' associations from various sectors, primarily LA members are located in the Vidzeme and Latgale regions.
• Association of Agricultural Statutory Companies unites more than 50 farms, which are considered large farms in terms of economic size. A large part of the organization's members are dairy farms.