On Monday, November 18, Ģirts Krūmiņš, the State Secretary of the Ministry of Agriculture, at the meeting of the Council of Ministers for Agriculture and Fisheries, emphasized a complicated situation in the sector of agriculture in Latvia as well as he repeatedly asked to increase customs duties for a wider scope of agricultural goods and food imported from Russia and Belarus.
At the Council meeting, Member States discussed different challenges in the sector of agriculture, mainly associated with extreme weather conditions, outbreaks of animal and plant diseases as well as concerns related to trade and geo-political developments.
In Latvia, many major agricultural branches have also repeatedly suffered serious losses due to unfavorable weather conditions. The difficult situation is in grain, fruit and vegetable branches, which suffered from hard frosts in May as well as rain showers and windstorms in July, which destroyed a big part of agricultural crop sowings. Some branches are still incurring economic challenges caused by the market. Poultry production, being the second significant branch of agricultural sector in Latvia, now is incurring significant problems because of market distortions, particularly due to the increased import of eggs from Ukraine.
Due to these circumstances, yields and quality has decreased besides, production costs remain very high and are even increasing for some production resources. All this has caused financial losses for farmers, creating risks for competitiveness and viability of producers. Therefore, Latvia has addressed the European Commission with a request to grant Latvian sector of agriculture the EU emergency aid.
Russia’s war against Ukraine and other geo-political events, have heavily impacted agricultural market and the market structure has also significantly changed. Therefore, the Ministry of Agriculture has prepared - and Latvia suggests increasing immediately the customs tariffs for new products from Russia and Belarus, t.i. fish, different preparations and prepared foodstuffs from grain, different fruit and vegetables, processed fruit and vegetables, sugar and cocoa preparations, ethyl alcohol and beer as well as other food stuffs, including sauces, ketchups, mixes of spices, etc. This would be another instrument to support Ukraine, reducing Russia’s revenues and respectively a further ability to carry on war operations in Ukraine.