Agriculture in Lithuania

As elsewhere, the practice of agriculture in Lithuania during the Neolithic period showed limited scope and was constrained by the availability of tools.

The establishment of the Academy of Agriculture in Dotnuva in 1924 has contributed significantly to the quality of land exploitation and the high social status of agronomists.

Lithuanian agriculture was collectivized during the early years of Soviet rule; although as a general rule, this system was unproductive, it became relatively efficient in the late 1950s when Moscow granted the communist leadership in Vilnius greater control of agricultural policy.

As in other Soviet-dominated areas, about one-third of agricultural production came from private plots of land and not from collective or state farms.

Lithuania's agriculture, efficient by Soviet standards, was producing a huge surplus that could not be consumed domestically.

Significant reforms were introduced in the early 1990s to reestablish private ownership and management in the agricultural sector.

One problem was that farms were broken up into smallholdings, averaging 8.8 hectares in size, often not large enough to be economically viable.

A serious drought in 1994 further reduced agricultural output and cost farmers an estimated 790 million litas in production.