UNHIDE Agroforestry booklet 2025.09.22 - Flipbook - Page 36
Bekas Family/Nature Demonstration Farm: Silvopasture, Latvia
“NATURAL GRASSLANDS
ARE THE MOST
ENDANGERED HABITAT
IN OUR COUNTRY”
- Viesturs Lārmanis
In Latvia, as everywhere, intensive agriculture has
transformed natural meadows and grasslands,
including pastures with low intensity grazing, to
drained arable land with monoculture agriculture,
resulting in habitat loss and species extinction. In
parallel, the lack of grazing, together with rural
depopulation and land abandonment, has left
Melempyrum pratense.
Sid 7-8
agricultural land and pastures of less economic
value being overgrown with trees, and this also
defines the Latvian landscape.
Bekas is a family farm, demonstration site and
learning centre for grassland restoration in
northern Latvia. The farm is partly located in the
Ziemeļgauja nature reserve, one of the country’s
most species rich Natura 2000 areas. The landscape here is shaped by the Gauja River which
floods annually and erodes the sandbanks, meandering through grasslands with pine forests.
On the farm’s 120 hectares, there are 11 types of
woodland meadows, pastures and dry grasslands
Filipendula ulmaria.
