The more extensive sale of farms that began in the Baltic provinces in the mid-19th century due to pressure from the central authorities put tenant farmers in a situation where they had to make a choice – whether to continue as a tenant or to make a fresh start in freeholder status. The low profitability of agriculture made farmers, who had lived as serfs only half a century ago, cautious in regard to purchasing farms outright. Transition from the previously prevailing methods to more intensive agriculture based on science was required to increase the income of farmsteads. County agricultural societies that operated in Southern Estonia and the writings of Carl Robert Jakobson convincingly demonstrated to farm folk the need to transition to agriculture based on science. Support for this conviction broadened continuously. The effects of this shift in attitude were initially limited to the adoption of the swivel plough. The paucity of farmstead incomes prevented farmers from taking the next step, the transition to dairy farming and the production of butter and cheese.

A number of parochial agricultural associations had been formed in addition to the county agricultural societies in both Southern and Northern Estonia by the start of the 20th century. The congress of representatives of Estonian agricultural societies held in 1899 endorsed a ‘new plan for improving the economic conditions of the Estonian people’. At its more general level, the plan is associated with the understanding phrased by Jaan Tõnisson (1898) that the prerequisite for the further social and cultural development of Estonians is the achievement of economic independence. This document calls for the development of cooperation to thereby compensate for the problem of smallness that had hitherto hindered the development of smallholdings and generated social tensions. The fostering of consultation work to improve the spread of knowledge and experiences is called for as another key course of action.

Discernible progress was already achieved in the accomplishment of both tasks over the course of the subsequent ten years. A large number of diverse associations operated by the time that the First World War broke out, including cooperative dairies producing butter. A consultation network had been developed, and the frequency of the organisation of short-term and long-term agricultural courses taught in the Estonian language increased from year to year. The sphere of agriculture, primarily consultation work and cooperative activity, provided more than fifty Estonian specialists with jobs. As a rule, these specialists were relatively young individuals who were educated in agriculture.

Umbrella associations that operated at the governorate level as mediators between farm folk and civil and military authorities, namely the Central Society of Agricultural Societies of Estonia (1909) and the Central Association of Northern Baltic Agricultural Societies (1913), acquired considerable authority in the years of the First World War. Many individuals who were associated with agricultural associations were elected members of the Estonian Provincial Assembly and are connected to the declaration of Estonian independence and the building of independent statehood.