“We are gathering data and will propose to include this issue on the agenda. The government, in turn, is also gathering data and assessing the situation, but we in our sector believe that (declaring a state of emergency) is indeed necessary,” said the minister to the BNS agency on Tuesday. According to Mazeyka, declaring a state of emergency would allow farmers to avoid certain obligations and penalties. He stated that farms have incurred losses due to both the rains that flooded the crops and the power outages that affected both grain dryers and dairy farms. “In Samogitia, where a lot of rain has fallen, the grain is already flooded. There is a high likelihood that it will not be harvested. (...) In Kalvarija, there will be no electricity until the weekend. And dairy farms there are buying, building, and looking for generators. (...) Late last night, I received information that a farm collected hundreds of tons of grain right before the rain, the humidity is high, and there is no electricity — they cannot dry it, cannot unload or transfer it. This is very bad for this grain, it may just rot in the silos,” said the minister. According to him, the damage from the cyclone could be "quite significant," but it is difficult to assess the extent of the destruction accurately, as the number of reports continues to grow. As reported by the BNS agency, as of Tuesday morning, more than 93,000 consumers remained without electricity due to the cyclone that swept through Lithuania on Saturday.
