One of the responsibilities of the Ministry of Agriculture is facilitating a sustainable management of forest land by balancing economic, social and ecologic interests of the society and the State. To fulfil this target, regulatory acts and informative statements are being drafted with a view to the management of forest land (alienation, lease, change of uses, etc.) as well as effectiveness of regulatory acts is evaluated, and proposals are prepared for updating regulatory acts, governing these areas.
The State strategy for facilitating land management and increase in productivity has been incorporated, as a concept, into the National Development Plan and the draft Rural Development Program 2014-2020. Ambition set up by the Ministry of Agriculture: in the period until 2020, to achieve that up to 2 million ha of agricultural land is involved in agricultural production.
To ensure a rational use of a long-term asset of Latvia – land, maintaining the area of agricultural land, ensuring an effective and sustainable use of land, as well as to protect Latvia’s land resources and their availability for Latvia’s inhabitants, the Ministry of Agriculture has drawn up the concept. With a view to protection of Latvia’s land resources and ensuring their availability, this concept constitutes a specific regulation on land market that is focusing on the use of agricultural land in agricultural production and curtailing possibilities to acquire agricultural land with profiteering purposes, establishing Latvian Land Fund, providing access to agricultural land for Latvia’s farmers, establishing a crediting program for acquisition of agricultural land, improvement of sanction mechanisms for agricultural land not used for agricultural purposes, personal income tax exemptions for agricultural land owners who sell agricultural land to producing farmers, the increased tax on real estate for those owners of agricultural land, who do not maintain the land in good agricultural and environmental condition, a strict procedure for changing categories of ameliorated agricultural land. At the Ministry of Agriculture the work on the conception is ongoing.