Saldus Municipality Farm Pampāļi Wins “Sējējs” Farm of the Year Award
Latvia's top agricultural award, the “Sējējs” prize for Farm of the Year, went this year to the joint-stock company Pampāļi in Saldus Municipality. Its long-time head, Jānis Vaļko, died a few weeks after the recognition.
The joint-stock company Pampāļi in Saldus Municipality, which grew out of a Soviet-era collective farm, has received the “Sējējs” competition award in the “Farm of the Year” category this year. It is the highest award in Latvian agriculture. Only a few weeks after the recognition, the farm's long-time manager Jānis Vaļko died at the age of 76. He had led the company for 35 years.
A collective farm that was not broken up
Jānis Vaļko was born in 1950 in Pampāļi parish. After training as an accountant, agronomist and economist, he returned to his home parish in 1978 as the collective farm's chief dispatcher and took over its management from Vilis Belsons in 1986. During the national awakening he worked in the Saldus district Popular Front, and in the January 1991 barricade days he sent the farm's heavy machinery to Riga.
After independence was restored, collective farms were liquidated and privatised, and many were split up. Vaļko persuaded the shareholders to keep the farm united and led the buyout and consolidation of land. He was honoured with the Barricade Participant's Commemorative Badge and the Honour Badge of the Order of the Three Stars, Second Class, and was a Commander of the Cross of Recognition and an Honorary Citizen of Saldus Municipality. In 2021 he handed management to his son Mārtiņš.
The farm today
Pampāļi covers about 5,400 hectares: 4,200 hectares of farmland and more than 1,040 hectares of forest. It operates dairy farming, crop growing, forestry and biogas production, and also keeps an apiary of 120 colonies. The herd numbers about 2,200 cattle, over a thousand of them dairy cows. The farm is moving towards a capacity of 1,300 cows in a fully robotised milking system.
Mārtiņš Vaļko is introducing automation and robotics, including smart collars, milking and feed-pushing robots, and data analysis using artificial intelligence. He links this to a labour shortage, as fewer people want to milk at night. Some cows are inseminated with beef-breed bulls to soften the effect of milk price swings.
The biogas plant converts manure into electricity and heat. About 80% of the electricity goes into the grid, enough for roughly half of the households in Saldus Municipality. The digestate returns to the fields as fertiliser, while the solid part is used as bedding. Mārtiņš Vaļko says this line of business is not profitable but reduces odours. His sister Līga runs marketing.
