Thursday May 23, Armands Krauze, the Minister for Agriculture, in Riga, had the meeting with
Yvon Slingenberg, (acting) Deputy Director-general of the Directorate-General for Climate Action to discuss the EU ambitions and objectives in mitigating the consequences of climate changes and their relevance to reality in production sectors in Latvian rural areas – agriculture, food production and forestry. Taking into account the primary role of food and wood production in the EU economy, EU must at last find a balance in actions towards strengthening of economy and endeavours to achieve the EU environment and climate objectives.
The Minister for Agriculture, Armands Krauze: “Achieving of the EU climate-neutrality objectives and policy has a considerable impact on agriculture and forestry. This must be taken into consideration because both agriculture, food industry and forestry contribute considerably to the development of rural territories and economy. Agricultural and forest land in Latvia is an essential but limited production resource. The EU environment and climate policy is setting up ambitious objectives and they are directly impacting the way we use our agricultural and forest land. Therefore we need balanced and reality-based solutions and availability of funding to be able to achieve the climate objectives both in the current and next programming period.”
The Ministry of Agriculture, in discussions at the EU Council of Ministers for Agriculture and Forestry, is regulary reminding how important it is to balance different EU policies particularly those, which on one hand, affect the EU food and wood safety as well as other aspects of economy and on the other hand, objectives of the energy and climate changes. Therefore, Latvia is currently actively working on updating of the National Energy and Climate Plan 2021-2023 and land management measures, which would be applicable to specificity of Latvia to ensure an effective and sustainable use and management of agricultural and forest land, at the same time contributing to achieving of the environment and climate objectives.