The Agricultural Chamber as helper of the Ministry

Already in 1921 the then minister of Agriculture Jonas Aleksa put forward the proposal, that Lithuania should follow the example of other Western countries and establish a body representing farmers, styled as Agricultural Chamber or Agricultural council. It has been done only on December 19, 1926, when the Act on Agricultural Chamber was adopted. Yet for the time being the Agricultural Chamber remained in fact inactive and did not conduct any significant activity. The congress of farmers which took place in the spring of 1928 could be considered as the second birth of the Agricultural Chamber. The members of the Chamber unanimously elected J. Aleksa chairman of the board. It was the only time when a minister of agriculture simultaneously was also at the helm of the Agricultural Chamber, albeit for a short time.

Agricultural Chamber and the Ministry had a clear distribution of functions. Ministry formulated main issues of strategy and policy, while the Chamber elaborated them in details and put in practice.

J. Aleksa’s term of office of 12 years as the Minister of Agriculture was longest in the prewar period. J.Tubelis, who worked first as the Minister of finance and later as the Prime Minister has also contributed greatly to the enhancement of Lithuanian agricultural sector. We should also not forget the only farmer in the charge of the Minister of Agriculture, the agronomist Stasys Putvinskis-Putvis who held this position in 1935-1938. He particularly focused on strong links between the Ministry and farmers and their organizations. Still another noteworthy minister of Agriculture was Mykolas Krupavicius, who was main architect of the radical land reform announced in 1922.