Environmentally Friendly Agriculture: Development Issues in Latvia

Summary

Organic farming as the method and organic food nowadays play more and more important role in supplying sustainable and environmentally friendly practices, support a high level of biodiversity, utilize natural processes and ensure appropriate animal welfare standards. The paper analyzes the development and issues of perspectives of organic farming in Latvia. Some findings on organic agriculture development are given, estimating the primary information on organic farming in Latvia regarding the trends of organic farms' number, utilized organic agricultural land and share of organic land in the total agricultural land. Furthermore, the state policy and support for organic farming have been analyzed and compared with that of European Union (EU) and its Member States. The influence of Latvia's accession to the EU on the organic farming development is assessed. Some issues of further perspectives of development of Latvian organic agriculture are evaluated.