Last year, the total contribution of the agricultural sector to the economy was 3.43 billion euros, of which 1.681 billion euros was the direct contribution and 1.749 billion euros was the indirect contribution, said Daunis Auers, one of the study's authors and a representative of the think-tank "Certus", at the conference "From Soil to Growth: An Analysis of the Latvian Agricultural Sector" on Wednesday.

Data from the study shows that, globally, the value of agricultural production has increased over the last 60 years, and the agricultural sector has developed not only in high-income countries but also in the Asia-Pacific region and elsewhere.

Meanwhile, in Europe, between 1995 and 2020, the number of people working in the agricultural sector as a proportion of total employment fell by more than 10%. However, as Auers pointed out, this is a positive and logical trend, as some processes in the agricultural sector are being automated with the development of technology.