🇱🇻 The cattle breeds of Latvia

Latvian cattle keep a low profile in a farming country better known for wheat and potatoes. Under Soviet rule, herds on vast collective and state farms made the country a major meat and milk supplier to the wider USSR, while families kept a third of the dairy cows on tiny plots. Numbers dropped sharply as the Soviet system collapsed after 1991.

• Private half-hectare plots held about a third of Latvia's dairy cows in 1991
• Livestock output nearly doubled from 1940 to 1990 while crop growing rose just 14 percent
• In 1990 Latvia sent a tenth of its meat and a fifth of its dairy to other Soviet republics
• Herd numbers on state and collective farms fell by up to 23 percent during 1990-91
• Half the arable land grew fodder crops, more than 40 percent of it grain

Cattle in Latvia

Cattle keeping in Latvia sits inside a mixed farming economy that also grows wheat, potatoes, barley, oats, rye and rapeseed. Animals carried more weight than crops in recent history: between 1940 and 1990 livestock output nearly doubled, while crop growing managed only a 14 percent rise despite heavy spending on drainage and fertiliser. Dairy cows and other cattle were reared above all for the wider Soviet market, with Latvia swapping meat and milk for fuel, feed grain, machinery and fertiliser. The story is one of state organisation on a grand scale, alongside household plots capped at half a hectare, and of a sharp contraction once the Soviet system fell apart after independence in 1991.

Milk, butter and beef

Latvian cattle were kept chiefly for meat and milk. Under Soviet rule the country became a major supplier of both, and in 1990 it sent a tenth of its meat and a fifth of its dairy produce to other Soviet republics. The trade ran both ways: meat and milk went out, while farm machinery, fuel, feed grain and fertiliser came in return. In the system's final year, the big farms produced 6 to 7 percent less meat, milk and eggs than before.

Today

Latvia regained independence in 1991 with a livestock sector under strain. Feed shortages and the soaring cost of equipment had already cut animal numbers on state and collective farms by as much as 23 percent in a year, and the meat, milk and egg yield from those farms fell by 6 to 7 percent. The country entered its new era with roughly 2.6 million hectares of farmland, a third less than in 1935, and more than a million hectares of old fields turned back to forest.