Latvian Agricultural Academy

founded in 1939 in Jelgava. As of 1973, the academy had departments of agronomy (founded at the Riga Polytechnic Institute in 1863), veterinary medicine and forest management (founded at the Latvian University in 1919), zootechny, mechanization of agricultural and motor-vehicle transportation, irrigation and drainage, land management, economics of agriculture and bookkeeping and accounting in agriculture, woodworking technology, food technology, and nutrition; a correspondence department; a department for advanced training; a department of societal professions; a preparatory department; a graduate department; 51 subdepartments; two special-problems laboratories; and six scientific laboratories. The library has more than 400,000 holdings. The academy has two training and experimental farms (about 4,000 hectares [ha] each), and a training forestry farm (12,000 ha).

In the 1972–73 academic year, 6,600 students were attending the academy and the teaching staff numbered about 400, including four academicians and corresponding members of the Academy of Sciences of the Latvian SSR and the V. I. Lenin All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences, 22 professors and doctors of science, and 178 docents and candidates of sciences. The academy accepts doctoral and candidates’ dissertations for defense. It has published Trudy (Transactions) since 1946 in Russian and Latvian. Since its establishment it has trained about 12,000 specialists. The academy was awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Labor in 1971.