Aleksejs Nipers

BIOECONOMY DEVELOPMENT POTENTIAL BASED ON MORE EFFICIENT LAND USE IN THE EU

Europe 2020 Strategy highlights bioeconomy as a key element for smart and green growth in Europe. Bioeconomy in this case includes agriculture, forestry, fisheries, food and pulp and paper production, parts of chemical, biotechnological and energy industries and plays an important role in the EU’s economy. The growth of key industries of bioeconomy – agriculture and forestry – highly depends on an efficient and productive use of land as a production resource. The overall aim of this paper is to evaluate opportunities for development of the main sectors of bioeconomy (agriculture and forestry) in the EU based on the available resources of land. To achieve this aim, several methods were used – monographic, analysis and synthesis, induction and deduction, statistical analysis methods. The findings show that it is possible to improve the use of land in the EU Member States. If all the Member States reached the average EU level, agricultural products worth EUR 77 bln would be annually additionally produced, which is 19 % more than in 2014, and an extra 5 billion m3 volume of forest growing stock would be gained, which is 20 % more than in 2010. Keywords: bioeconomy, agricultural and forest area, efficiency, productivity. Article DOI: http://doi.org/10.15544/RD.2015.101

Possibilities to identify organic soils in the agricultural area in Latvia

Organic soils are the soils being rich in organic matter; they comprise part of the utilised agricultural area (UAA) and are a significant source of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from agriculture in Latvia. In Latvia, annual precipitation is greater than evaporation, which creates favourable conditions for the formation of soils rich in organic matter. Therefore, the overall aim of the present research is to examine possibilities to identify organic soils in the agricultural area in Latvia. To achieve the aim, the following specific research tasks are defined: 1) to analyse the agricultural land area in Latvia; 2) to describe the possibilities to identify organic soils in the agricultural area in Latvia and to examine the organic soil area in Latvia. The research found that the UAA, according to various information sources, was different, which made the identification of the organic soil area problematic. Information on soils in Latvia is not collected according to Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) standards and definitions, therefore the present research classified organic soils according to the latest list of soils in Latvia and IPCC criteria. An analysis of the soil map of Latvia and the available data of the Rural Support Service’s Geographic Information System showed that the organic soil area in Latvia was in the range from 148 069 ha to 345 844 ha.