Lithuanian food industry associations and leaders of several companies in the sector met with the Minister of Agriculture, K\u0119stutis Navickas, to make proposals on how to strengthen the Lithuanian food industry. Although they did not hear the Minister’s promise that this key industry would receive the attention it requested in the strategic plans of the state, the associations are hopeful that the political will to help the food industry is there and that there will be a place for it in the 2023\u20132027 Strategic Plan.
\n\u201eEverybody talks at various levels about the importance of the Lithuanian food industry, how we are able to export a variety of food products to many countries around the world, that the country’s consumers are fully supplied with a wide range of top quality food products at affordable prices, that we have the opportunity to help Ukraine with food products. In order to keep this chain going, companies remain ready for investment, but state aid is very important. The food industry today is like a ‘stepchild’ or a ‘football’. For the Ministry of Agriculture, we are not farmers, so we do not need to pay much attention, but for the Ministry of Economy and Innovation, we are part of the agricultural chain, so the sector is being ignored and unduly discriminated against in the absence of a clear administrator, even though there are certain resources and opportunities to help,\u201c said Ms Rusziauskien\u0117.
\nShe said that the Minister discussed the Strategic Plan for Lithuanian Agriculture and Rural Development 2023\u20132027, which is still being negotiated with the European Commission. \u201eWe were involved in its preparation and made comments, but now we see that only a very small part of them has been taken into account. What has been ignored will have a negative impact not only on the country’s food industry but also on consumers. We have expressed all this to the Minister and, before that, to the Head of Government, but there have been no promises that anything will be changed in favour of the food industry. It seems that politicians talk a lot about strategies and the importance of the Lithuanian food industry in their public communications, but in reality and in the documents that are being drafted, this is not the case.\u201c \u2013 said the Director of the Lithuanian Association of Cereals and Processors. At the meeting, food producers also drew the Minister’s attention to the fact that only \u20ac50 million of the almost \u20ac4 billion of EU support for agriculture and rural development in Lithuania between 2023 and 2027 is earmarked for the processing of agricultural products. \u201eLithuania needs, first and foremost, an agri-food industry strategy that clearly defines our priorities, which areas we are developing and how we compete with the industries supported by other countries. If the country is to achieve the breakthrough it claims, projects must respond to the challenges at hand. Otherwise, the investments will not pay off and will not create the expected technological and other changes that would ensure the sustainability of the food industry,\u201c says Andrius Pranckevi\u010dius, Director General of JSC \u201eKauno gr\u016bdai\u201c. He said that the assessment of the plan lacks a clear assessment of the return on investment, as is the case in other countries that clearly know where and how much each euro invested will pay off for the state. \u201eToday, investing in the food industry provides countries with stability and reassurance that their citizens will not run out of food, especially in a turbulent period when companies need to find urgent solutions to the energy and technology needed to produce food that does not make food more expensive than drastically more expensive fuel and electricity. Seeing how other countries are doing it, we expect a similar approach from our government,\u201c said Mr Pranckevi\u010dius.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Lithuanian food industry associations and leaders of several companies in the sector met with the Minister of Agriculture, K\u0119stutis Navickas, to make proposals on how to strengthen the Lithuanian food industry. Although they did not hear the Minister’s promise that this key industry would receive the attention it requested in the strategic plans of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":3952,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3951","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cloud"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n