Ministry of Agriculture and Food (Soviet Union)
The Soviet Ministry of Agriculture and Food was established in 1929 and known prior to 1946 as the People's Commissariat for Agriculture - Narkomzem).History
The commissariat united all republican commissariats of the Soviet Union. It was formally known as the People's Commissariat for Agriculture was set up in Petrograd in October 1917. Vladimir Milyutin was appointed the first People's Commissar of Agriculture. He was a member of the Council of People's Commissars.
Despite having signed the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention, the Soviet Union continued development and mass production of offensive biological weapons. These activities were conducted by the main directorate — "Biopreparat" — along with the Ministry of Agriculture and Food and several other Soviet ministries and agencies. In the 1980s, the Ministry of Agriculture successfully developed variants of foot-and-mouth disease and rinderpest against cows, African swine fever for pigs, and psittacosis to kill chicken. These agents were prepared to be sprayed down from tanks attached to aeroplanes over hundreds of miles. The secret program was code-named "Ecology".
The Ministry was abolished in November 1985 with the creation of the State Agro-Industrial Committee, which took over the functions of the Ministry for Agriculture, the Ministry for Fruit and Vegetable Production, the Ministry for the Meat and Dairy Industry, the Ministry of the Food Industry and the Ministry for Rural Construction.Offices
It took over the Narkomzem offices located at Orlikov Pereulok, 1, Moscow, designed by Aleksey Shchusev in 1928. This building is currently occupied by the Ministry of Agriculture of the Russian Federation.Source:
