Przemysł rolno-spożywczy w województwie wołyńskim w latach 1921–1939

Abstract

In the years of the Second Polish Republic, the Volyn province, as an agricultural region, had good conditions for the development of the agricultural and food industry. At the beginning of the 1930s, the province was in the lead in the growth of, among others, wheat (13,3% of the domestic production), barley (11,1%), millet (25,5%), hemp (25,9%), clover (14,6%), canola and agrimony (24,2%), buckwheat (22,6%), and hop (63,4%). At the same time, Volyn became the main hop centre in Poland. The province was also in the lead in breeding: in 1934 it ranked first in horse breeding and fourth in pig farming. In the years 1921–1936, progress in the development of the local supply area for the agricultural and food industry was noticeable. Considerable changes took place in the functioning and production of the Volyn agricultural and food industry during the time of the Second Polish Republic. The changes included the necessity of reconstructing damaged buildings, giving up the opening of some factories, reorientation of the markets (due to the lack of stabilized conditions of trading with Russia), nation-wide cartelization of some lines of business, limiting production by putting quotas (e.g. sugar industry), and the development of modern bacon industry (by well-known Łódź industrialists – the Eisert family). The aim of the actions that were undertaken by the government with respect to the agriculture as well as agricultural and food industry in Volyn was to diversify the crops and the agricultural income by popularizing oil crops and supporting new branches of industry.