Klaipėdos universitetas

Hemp is a very valuable plant because each part of it can be used in many ways. It can be used to produce innovative products for building construction, chemical industry, medicine, textile production, consumption, and agriculture. In the article, the authors have aggregated the information about hemp cultivation and processing sector development in the European Union and Latvia and have described its cultivation possibilities, technological processes, and processing capabilities. The aim of the present article was to reveal the topicalities of hemp industry development in the European Union and Latvia. The tasks of the research were to present an overall description of hemp industry development trends in the European Union and to characterize hemp industry development in Latvia focusing on the national support activities and hemp cultivation and processing opportunities. The authors of the article have performed an extensive secondary data analysis to summarize the most important activities that should be done at the national scale to further enhance the development of hemp industry in Latvia.

The temporal and spatial changes of land use are important while studying the rural landscapes on both the regional-geographical and environmental scales. In the Baltic Sea region with nine countries (including Russian Federation, represented by Kaliningrad oblast, the utilised agricultural land (UAL) makes about 34 % of total region area on the average. The current research revealed the trends of different shrinking rate of UAL in nine studied countries from 1993 to 2008: it varied within the range between 3 % in Denmark and 43 % in Estonia. Research focus was given to the changes in ratio between arable land and area under meadows and pastures: it increased from 6.5 to 10.9 during 15 years period (1993–2008) on the average, that shows the increase in land use and farming intensity even the UAL area was shrunk.