The Importance of Higher Education in Agriculture at the Polytechnic School/the Polytechnic Institute in Riga

Higher education in agriculture in the territory which is now Latvia begins in 1863 when the department of agriculture was founded at the private institution of higher education- when the Polytechnic School in Riga was founded. After the reorganization in 1896 it became a state institution and was renamed the Polytechnic Institute in Riga and with the Russian language as the language of education. With the laps of time the duration of the studies was prolonged from two to four years. In the time from 1863 to 1918/19 the department had 591 alumni, who did not only work in the Baltic provinces but all over Russia, Poland and the Caucasus. The students of agriculture came from different nationalities and among the Latvians who developed the agrarian sciences in different sectors, who wrote textbooks and developed the agricultural sciences to one of the main-branches in Latvia in the first half of the 20th century. This task is now continued at the Latvian University of Agriculture in Jelgava