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In Latvia the production resource - land is not exploited efficiently, and there is a large potential for land to be used in efficient agricultural production. National task is set for the next years in Latvia to retain agricultural land for agricultural production, in order to efficiently manage approximately 2 million ha. The agricultural sector is an important source of nitric oxide (N2O), methane (CH4) and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. Increasing agricultural production is expected to increase the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in Latvia. Emissions depend on the specialization and the farm grown products. Quantifying emissions from different specialization farms can identify the main sources of emissions and make decisions to reduce them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Latvia has been actively involved in reducing global climate change. However, since 2006, along with an increase in economic activity, greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) from Latvia's agricultural sector have tended to increase; besides, the agricultural sector is the second largest source of GHG emissions, in 2015 accounting for 24.2% of the total GHG emissions in the country. Such changes in GHG emissions from agriculture in Latvia indicate that without additional measures Latvia cannot reach its GHG emission targets set internationally as one of the EU strategic goals is to introduce low carbon farming in practice. Experience of different countries shows that several approaches may be applied to analyses of GHG reduction activities. This paper develops a marginal abatement cost curve (MACC) for crop farming applicable in Latvia's agriculture. A range of specific measures, which aims to foster effective fertilizer application and improve soil fertility were screened for their cost-effectiveness and mitigation potential using disaggregated approach. Results indicate that MACC approach is useful tool for understanding and motivating mitigation in agriculture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]