Society of Agriculture of Southern Russia

Society of Agriculture of Southern Russia (Общество селского хозайства Южной России; Obshchestvo selskogo khoziaistva Iuzhnoi Rossii). The first agricultural organization in Ukraine and one of the first in the Russian Empire. Founded on the initiative of Prince Mikhail Vorontsov in 1828, it made its head office in Odesa and extended its operations throughout Kherson gubernia, Katerynoslav gubernia, Tavriia gubernia, and Bessarabia gubernia. To improve farming in the region the society supported scientific research, disseminated agricultural information, and promoted various enterprises related to farming. Besides funding experiments on local and foreign grains, feed crops, and industrial crops, the society ran an experimental fruit farm, helped to introduce meteorological monitoring, prepared soil maps of the southern gubernias, provided financial assistance to university students, held agricultural exhibitions, contests, and conferences, and encouraged railroad construction, the digging of artesian wells, agricultural machine building and distribution, and forestation and forest management. From its inception the society published its own journal, titled at first Listki and then Zapiski. Its efforts at improving viticulture, sheep farming, and orcharding were particularly important in the economic development of Southern Ukraine.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 4 (1993).]