Romain Schneider, Luxembourg's Minister of Agriculture, Viticulture and Rural Development; Credit: SIP / Yves Kortum

On Friday 30 October 2020, Luxembourg's Ministry of Agriculture, Viticulture and Rural Development announced details of various support measures for the agriculture sector in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic.

As part of the revival plan for agriculture, Luxembourg's Minister of Agriculture, Viticulture and Rural Development, Romain Schneider, had originally presented on 16 June a first package of measures and actions with an envelope of €2 million and focused on 3 components: consolidate - promote - innovate.

This first package included financial aid to consolidate the sector by initially alleviating the cash flow problems. The first package of the recovery plan also provides for a panoply of actions to promote the diversification and promotion of short circuits and quality local agricultural products while strengthening innovation in the agricultural sector to enable the sector to face food, environmental and climatic challenges with the appropriate means and technologies.

When presenting these measures, Minister Schneider had specified that the recovery plan for agriculture had a global envelope of €5 million and that a second package of €3 million would be tied up after a detailed analysis economic repercussions on the agricultural and wine sector as well as on the agrifood processing sector.

Due to the pandemic, the conclusions of this analysis could not be presented to the sector, as initially planned, during agricultural meetings; nevertheless, Minister Schneider made a point of presenting the results to the various agricultural organisations through a videoconference called “Landwirtschftsdësch”.

Meat and wine markets disrupted due to lockdown

An in-depth analysis of the various sectors has shown that the meat sector is currently facing considerable market fluctuations, with significant drops in producer prices for most products, including beef and pork.

In addition, the wine sector, despite the reopening of restaurants, continues to have difficulty in marketing and distributing its products mainly because of the events sector and Horesca, an area which remains particularly affected by the pandemic.

This exchange enabled representatives of agricultural organisations to share with the Minister their views on the conclusions of this analysis and to reach a broad consensus on support measures for the most affected agricultural and wine sectors.

Support measures in the fight against COVID-19

Beyond the measures already presented in a first package, additional measures amounting to €2.15 million are therefore necessary to consolidate the sector:

• Targeted aid varying from €1,000 to €5,000 for professional farms active in the meat sector (cattle, pigs, sheep and goats)

• A flat-rate aid of €5,000 per member is granted to agro-food cooperatives which have been confronted with significant additional costs caused by confinement

• Support by the Ministry of Agriculture, Viticulture and Rural Development of the contribution to the viticultural solidarity fund per hectare of vines for the year 2020

Digitisation of agriculture

In addition to consolidation measures, representatives of agricultural organisations have agreed to join forces to get on the digitalisation train.
The substantial sum of €850,000 will be made available in order to set up a single national platform to manage all the data of the agricultural sector, in a concern of securing and valuing the data thus making it possible to increase the productivity of farms in their providing holistic agricultural advice essential to face the increasingly complex challenges of agriculture.

Minister Schneider reiterated in this context that the recovery plan, based on the pillars of consolidation, promotion and innovation, constitutes a coherent whole which will allow the sector to strengthen its position in the supply chain of "farm to fork", while increasing our food independence from abroad.

Following this constructive exchange, Minister Schneider clarified that the agricultural foundation was only partly postponed, in particular to discuss with the profession about the implementation of the new CAP.