Cabbages and potatoes, by the tonne, outside Riga City Hall. The Riga farmers protest landed on Thursday morning, and it’s aimed at how the city buys school lunches.
Farmers’ group Zemnieku saeima (the Farmers’ Saeima) tipped several tonnes of Latvian-grown vegetables in front of the council building on Rātslaukums on Thursday, 12 November, its statement says. Its target is a catering tender for Riga schools and kindergartens.
Key facts
- Where: outside Riga City Hall, Rātslaukums 1, on Thursday morning
- Who: Zemnieku saeima, a farmers’ organisation founded in 1999
- The tender: catering for 27 Riga schools and kindergartens, split into six lots, with an estimated value of €26,865,476.29
- The veg: offered to councillors for a national holiday meal; if they don’t take it, the group says Rigans can help themselves for free
What are the farmers angry about?
The city’s tender was published on 26 February. It covers meals in schools and city kindergartens run by Riga’s Education, Culture and Sports Department.
The farmers say a rule letting some products come from up to 300 km beyond Riga’s boundary reaches deep into neighbouring countries, where Latvian inspectors can’t easily check origin or quality. They also say lowest price still carries too much weight, Delfi reports. According to the group, as reported by LETA, a second tender covering 101 schools and kindergartens comes next.
“If Latvia’s biggest municipality can’t get local vegetables onto children’s lunch plates, we’re ‘gifting’ them to Riga councillors for the national holiday feast,” board member Mārtiņš Trons said, as quoted by Delfi (our translation from Latvian).
It’s the second protest in central Riga this week, after Tuesday’s culture workers’ march.
What has the council said?
Riga Council had not responded publicly to Thursday’s protest by the time we published.
In September, the city’s leadership told TV3 it would not stop the tender. The process had already dragged on, and the temporary catering contracts only ran until December. Deputy mayor Vilnis Ķirsis said the city couldn’t risk ending up with no lunches for children at all, TV3 reported. Both sides agreed then to work together on future tenders.
Not every farm group shares the complaint. Also in September, Mārtiņš Gaiķēns, head of the Latvian Organic Agriculture Association, told TV3 that farms in Kurzeme and Latgale sit within that 300 km too and couldn’t supply Riga schools if the limit were cut.
The farmers say more protests will follow if nothing changes. Ball’s in City Hall’s court.
Photo: Riga City Hall on Rātslaukums, 15 October 2014, Jorge Láscar / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0
