Research: Almost half of the raw material producers have left the Latvian dairy industry in 5 years
In five years (from 2015 to 2020), 8.14 thousand people left the dairy industry in Latvia. farms, which is almost 42%. of all the former, according to a study conducted by the Institute of Agricultural Resources and Economics.
According to him, the sharpest decrease was observed in the group of farms with less than 10 dairy cows, but the decrease was also recorded in other groups of dairy producers.
The total number of dairy cows decreased by 26.4 thousand, of which 14.3 thousand. in a group of dairy farmers who keep between one and nine dairy cows. T
he number of dairy cows decreased in all groups of farms, except for farms with 200 and more dairy cows, where the number of cattle increased by about 14 thousand, but according to the authors of the study, this increase does not compensate for the general decline.
According to the researchers of the institute, one of the main reasons for the decline in the country’s dairy sector is the difference between the average purchase price of milk in Latvia and the European Union – the average purchase price of milk in Latvia has long been at least 5%. lower than in the EU.
This may have been due to insufficient vertical integration and lower dry matter content (fat and protein) in Latvian raw milk. The study also revealed that Latvian milk production is dominated by small cooperatives of builders with less than a hundred members, so they cannot have a significant impact on purchase prices.
In 2020, the share of Latvian dairy cooperatives in the raw milk purchasing market was 33%, and that of milk processing companies – 35%. By comparison, on average, EU cooperatives account for about 64%. purchased milk, and in Ireland, for example, 98 per cent.
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