Agriculture, EU – Baltic States, Foodstuff, Latvia, Markets and Companies

''We have received calls from farmers in Vidzeme and Zemgale who have said that they have sold tons of potatoes to buyers from Romania and the Netherlands, who have arrived with trucks to transport the potatoes back to their respective countries. They are prepared to purchase all the potatoes available from farms and are obviously paying for this in cash,'' the director of the Musmaju darzeni cooperative, Edite Strazdina, said.

She said that local farmers are being offered good prices for their potatoes – LVL 0.10 per kilogram, while the local buying price is about LVL 0.08 per kilogram, informs LETA.

''If this continues, we will see something similar to what happened several years ago, when Russian buyers bought up local potatoes in Latvia, and we went through a potato shortage in the spring,'' Strazdina added.