Latvian ButterLettische Butter, National Butter Export Control Board of Latvia, 1929

Latvian Butter, cover

The quality of butter produced by the newly independent Latvia between the wars is nearly as steeped in legend as is the Latvian Brown↗ cow (brūnā govs)—recognized as its own cattle breed, with cows registered since 1885—from whose milk the butter was produced.

Latvia's economic base at the end of the 19th century had been industry, one based not on raw materials derived from the rich interior of the Russian Empire but from imports—ships would bring in the raw materials required for industry and leave laden with products mainly of flax and hemp while manufactured goods were destined for the interior or elsewhere in Europe. World War I destroyed that industrial base, whether through wartime destruction or, in the case of retreating occupying Bolshevik forces, evacuating entire factories to Russia and sabotage or destruction of what could not be removed.

Latvia's only viable option for post-war economic recovery was to return to its agrarian roots. Butter became a mainstay of Latvia's agricultural exports.

LATVIAN BUTTER ANNUAL EXPORTS

The graph shows about 14½ thousand tons exported in 1929 (year of publication), dropping the year of global economic depression, then recovering to nearly 24 thousand tons in 1938. Published by the Latvian Bureau of Statistics, 1939.

"Lettische Butter" was targeted at further expanding the German market. Germany quickly grew to be Latvia's largest source of imports, largely industrial goods. As a result, Latvia struggled with a perennial trade deficit with Germany, exporting only about half the value of what it imported; butter was a key component of Latvia's balance of trade strategy. By 1928, the year before this brochure was published, Latvia had become the tenth largest butter exporter on the world market, but with 85% going to a single customer, Germany.

Latvian butter production in the post-Soviet era has not recovered, with total production being a mere fraction of exports more than half a century ago, based on statistics we've been able to locate online (in thousands of tons):

We have not been able to locate more recent figures; after 2008 would be of particular interest, as that year the Latvian parliament passed measures aimed, in part, at increasing butter production. Nor have we found the current EU farm product export quotas pertaining to butter.1

We have provided a facsimile and transcription.

Additional reading

• Latvian Brown↗, at the Oklahoma State Department of Animal Science web site
• Discussion Paper No 4/10, Latvian Foreign Trade and Investment with Germany and Russia: Past and Present, by Viesturs Pauls Karnups↗, at the Europa-Kolleg Hamburg, Institute for European Integration web site
• Butter Cooperative collection↗, at the Minnesota Historical Society: photographs of butter packing, testing and storage from the same time period (ca. 1925-1926) at the Minnesota Cooperative Creamery (which became Land O' Lakes in 1926)—the similarities are quite striking, indicating that Latvia's butter cooperative and export industry in the late 1920's was as modern as any.