collective farm

 

an agricultural production unit including a number of farm households or villages working together under state control. The description of the collective farm has varied with time and place.

In the Soviet Union

In the Soviet Union a policy of gradual and voluntary collectivization of agriculture was adopted in 1927 to encourage food production while freeing labor and capital for industrial development. In 1929, with only 4% of farms in collectives, Stalin ordered the confiscation of peasants' land, tools, and animals; the kolkhoz [Rus.,=collective farm] replaced the family farm. The state would decide how much of what crops were to be produced, how much would be paid to the peasants for their work, and how much would go to the state at what price. Farmers who resisted were persecuted, exiled, even killed.

By 1931, more than half of all farms had been collectivized. Low productivity and inordinate government diversion of farm production contributed to a devastating rural famine in 1932–33. Under the Collective Farm Charter (1935), individual farmers were permitted to keep small garden plots and a few animals for domestic use, and to sell surplus production in local free markets.

Collectivization in the Soviet Union was almost complete by 1938. Successive reforms reflected the persistence of problems associated with centrally planned economies. In 1950 the government began amalgamating collective farms. The number of kolkhozy, which had peaked at 254,000, was reduced to 32,300 by 1972, while the average size of collective farms roughly tripled to approximately 7,500 acres (3,000 hectares), and the average number of households per kolkhozy increased from 75 before World War II to 340 in 1960.

In 1958 new laws abolished the government's power to requisition farm products and substituted direct state purchases at higher prices. In 1969 the Collective Farmers' Congress increased the size of private plots and instituted income guarantees and social insurance. In the 1970s, as an incentive to increase production, collective farmers were assured profits on various commodities. By this time about half of the cultivated land in the Soviet Union was in collectives; most of the rest was in state farms. As the Soviet Union and its bloc of Eastern European satellites disintegrated in the early 1990s, the collective farm faced a difficult and uncertain transition to new forms of ownership and management. In 1992, 7,000 farms chose to remain state-owned, while 9,000 chose to privatize, registering themselves as companies. Through the 1990s, Russia was forced to increase state subsidies to its collective farms, due to high inflation and price increases in supplies and equipment. In 2003, with the passage of laws permitting the sale of farmland, the foundations were laid for further changes in Russian agriculture.

In China

The commune of China is more strictly organized than the Soviet collective farm, including a wider range of activities, putting greater emphasis on communal living and including nonagricultural workers. Collectivization of agriculture in China began in 1955; by 1956, 96% of all farming households were included in cooperatives. The system failed to free the labor and capital needed for industrial expansion, and in 1958 the commune system was established.

Twenty to thirty cooperatives comprising over 20,000 members and 40 to 100 villages were merged into each commune. The land and equipment of the former cooperatives and any property and cash still held by the peasants became the property of the commune. In each commune an economic and administrative unit controlled the labor force and all means of production, providing central management of industry, commerce, education, agriculture, and military affairs. Living communally, workers performed both industrial and agricultural tasks and supported a military unit. They used communal nurseries, bathing facilities, barbershops, and similar facilities. Wages and perquisites were controlled by the state, and all products were marketed through state agencies.

By 1959 virtually all Chinese farm workers were members of communes. The inefficiency and management problems of large collectives, coupled with natural disasters and government errors, led to reforms. In the early 1960s communes were decentralized; some were divided into private farms. In the late 1970s, after the death of Mao Zedong, individual households were granted long-term leases on their farms, paying a fixed amount of their production to the state and consuming or selling the rest. For the first time the farm household was also allowed to sublet land, recover capital investments, hire labor, own machinery, and make agricultural decisions.

In Israel

In Israel, collective farms pay nominal rents to the Jewish National Fund, which holds all land in the name of the people. Israeli collectives are based on three models. The kibbutz, the best known and most important economically, was inaugurated in 1909 as a purely agricultural collective. Light industry was added in the 1920s, and other types of businesses and tourism are now also important economically. In a traditional kibbutz, all property except specified personal possessions is collectively owned, planning and work are collective, and communal living is the rule. Work is assigned on the basis of ability; foremen are elected; and goods are distributed according to need. A town meeting governs; elected officials implement policy and administer economic and social affairs. Israel's couple hundred kibbutzim represent a wide range of political and social beliefs. Although only a small percentage of Israel's population have ever been members, the kibbutzim have wielded considerable political influence. Since the early 1980s, when the debt of kibbutzim soared, many have implemented some privatization measures, have hired rather than elected their managers, and have reduced other collective and communal elements of kibbutz life.

In the moshav ovdim, first established in 1921, each family owns its own house and leases and works its own land, retaining any income it earns. Hired labor is prohibited. Buying and selling are done collectively. In the moshav shitufi, a collective model developed in 1936, property is held communally and work is done collectively. Wealth and housing are private. Many moshav dwellers now hold nonfarming jobs in projects developed on the moshav or outside the village.

In North America

Communal farming has not been markedly popular in North America, although numerous attempts have been made (see communistic settlements). An exception is the agricultural communities of Hutterites (see Hutterian Brethren), who, as a result of persecution in central Europe, emigrated to South Dakota in 1874. They have increased in population and economic prominence to include (1999) some 36,000 members, living in over 430 colonies, mainly in the Dakotas, Montana, Minnesota, Washington, and the Canadian provinces of Alberta, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan.

See also ejido.

Bibliography

See R. W. Davies, The Soviet Collective Farm (1980); W. Hinton, The Great Reversal (1989); A. Etzioni et al., ed., The Organizational Structure of the Kibbutz (1980).

Collective farming regards a system of agricultural organization in which farm laborers are not compensated via wages. Rather, the workers receive a share of the farm's net productivity.

The political process of institutionalizing this aforementioned system is known as collectivization. The Soviet Union undertook the world's first ^{[citation needed]} campaign of mass collectivization from 1929-1933. Soviet peasants in collective farms received a type of dividend after compulsory deliveries were made to the state. However, this was an example of forced collectivization, and should not be confused with voluntary collectivization, such as the one that takes place in a Kibbutz. Forced collectivization historically has had mixed results, sometimes causing famine and mass starvation when implemented on a large scale.

Communist Collectivization

Soviet Union

Main article: Collectivization in the USSR

In the Soviet Union, collectivization was introduced by Stalin in the late 1920s as a way to boost agricultural production through the organization of land and labor into collectives called collective farms (kolkhozes) and state farms (sovkhozes). At the same time, it was argued that collectivization would free poor peasants from economic servitude under the kulaks. It was hoped that the goals of collectivization could be achieved voluntarily, but when the new farms failed to attract the number of peasants hoped, the government blamed the oppression of the kulaks and resorted to forceful implementation of the plan.

Due to unreasonably high government quotas, farmers often got far less for their labor than they did before collectivization, and some refused to work. In many cases, the immediate effect of collectivization was to reduce grain output and almost halve livestock, thus producing major famines in 1932 and 1933.^[1] In one extreme episode, several million peasants, mainly in Ukraine, died in a famine during the drought of 1932-1933 after Stalin forced the peasants into the collectives (this famine is known in Ukraine as Holodomor). It was not until 1940 that agricultural production finally surpassed its pre-collectivization levels.

Baltic states

The Baltic states Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania were only occupied by the Soviet Union in the eve of the World War II, and had thus missed the first wave of collectivisation. Furthermore, the opposition to kolkhozes was rather high in these countries. Primarily to break this opposition, Stalin ordered the wave of March deportations of 1949. This was successful in causing terror among peasants and brought great acceleration to collectivisation in most regions.

Hungarian People's Republic

Main article: Collectivisation in Hungary

In the Hungarian People's Republic, agricultural collectivisation was attempted a number of times in the late 1940s and 50s (with disastrous results), until it was finally "successful" in the early 1960s under János Kádár.

Czechoslovakia (1948-89)

In Czechoslovakia, land reforms after World War I distributed most of the land to peasants and created large groups of relatively well-to-do farmers (though village poor still existed). These groups showed no support for communist ideals. In 1945, immediately after World War II, new land reform started. The first phase involved a confiscation of properties of Germans, Hungarians, and collaborants of Nazi regime in accordance with the Beneš decree. The second phase, promulgated by so-called Ďuriš's laws (after Communist Minister of Agriculture), in fact meant a complete revision of the pre-war land reform and tried to reduce maximal private property to 150 hectares (ha) of agricultural land and 250 ha of any land (forests, etc...). The third and final phase forbade possession of land above 50 ha for one family. This phase was carried out in April 1948, two months after Communists violently overtook power. Farms started to be collectivised, mostly under threat of sanctions. The most obstinate farmers were persecuted and imprisoned. The most common form of collectivization was agricultural cooperative (in Czech Jednotné zemědělské družstvo, JZD; in Slovak Jednotné roľnícke družstvo, JRD ). The collectivisation was implemented in three stages (1949-1952, 1953-1955, 1955-1960) and officially ended with implementation of the constitution establishing the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, which illegalized private ownership.

Many early cooperatives collapsed and were recreated again. Their productivity was low since they provided tiny salaries and no pensions, and they failed to create a sense of collective ownership; small scale pilfering was common, and food became scarce. Seeing the massive outflow of people from agriculture into cities, the government started to massively subsidise the cooperatives in order to make the standard of living of farmers equal to that of city inhabitants; this was the long-term official policy of the government. Funds, machinery, and fertilizers were provided; young people from villages were forced to study agriculture; and students were regularly sent (mandatorily) to help in cooperatives.

Subsidies and constant pressure destroyed the remaining private farmers; only a handful of them remained after the 1960s. The lifestyle of villagers had eventually reached the level of cities, and village poverty was eliminated. Czechoslovakia was again able to produce enough food for its citizens. The price of this success was a huge waste of resources because the cooperatives had no motivation to improve efficiency. Every piece of land was cultivated regardless of the expense involved, and the soil became heavily polluted with chemicals. Also, the intensive use of heavy machinery damaged topsoil. Furthermore, the cooperatives were infamous for overemployment.

In the late 1980s, the economy of Czechoslovakia stagnated, and the state-owned companies were unable to deal with advent of modern technologies. A few agricultural companies (where the rules were less strict than in state companies) used this situation to start providing high-tech products. For example, the only way to buy a PC compatible computer in the late 1980s was to get it (for an extremely high price) from one agricultural company acting as a reseller.

After the fall of Communism in Czechoslovakia (1989) subsidies to agriculture were stopped with devastating effect. Most of the cooperatives had problems competing with technologically advanced foreign competition and were unable to obtain investment to improve their situation. Quite a large percentage of them collapsed. The others that remained were typically insufficiently funded, lacking competent management, without new machinery and living from day to day. Employment in the agricultural sector dropped significantly (from approx. 3% of the population to approx. 1%).

People's Republic of China

Collective farming began in the People's Republic of China under Mao Zedong. It was further pursued during the Great Leap Forward, an attempt to rapidly mobilize the country in an effort to transform China into an industrialized communist society. The policy mistakes associated with this collectivization attempt during the Great Leap Forward resulted in mass starvation. According to many other sources, the death toll due to famine was most likely about 20 to 30 million people. The three years between 1959 and 1962 were known as the "Three Bitter Years" and the Three Years of Natural Disasters.

North Korea

While Hungary arguably provides the best positive example of collective farming in a communist state, North Korea provides its negative counterpart. In the late 1990s, the collective farming system collapsed under the strain of droughts. Estimates of deaths due to starvation ranged into the millions, although the government did not allow outside observers to survey the extent of the famine. Aggravating the severity of the famine, the government diverted international relief supplies to its armed forces.

Socialist Republic of Vietnam

Following the Fall of Saigon on April 30, 1975, South Vietnam briefly became the Republic of South Vietnam, a puppet state under military occupation by North Vietnam, before being officially reunified with the North under Communist rule as the Socialist Republic of Vietnam on July 2, 1976. Upon taking control, the Vietnamese communists banned other political parties, arrested suspects believed to have collaborated with the United States and embarked on a mass campaign of collectivization of farms and factories. Reconstruction of the war-ravaged country was slow and serious humanitarian and economic problems confronted the communist regime. In a historic shift in 1986, the Communist Party of Vietnam implemented free-market reforms known as Đổi Mới (Renovation). With the authority of the state remaining unchallenged, private ownership of farms and companies, deregulation and foreign investment were encouraged. The economy of Vietnam has achieved rapid growth in agricultural and industrial production, construction and housing, exports and foreign investment. However, the power of the Communist Party of Vietnam over all organs of government remains firm.

Israel

Collective farming was also implemented in Kibbutzim as a unique combination of Zionism and socialism. The concept still faces occasional criticism as inefficient and over reliant on state subsidies, but debates tend to be highly politicized.

See also

• Collectivization in the USSR
• Cooperative farming
• Collectivization in the Spanish Civil War
• Agriculture of Cuba
• UBPC (Cuban Cooperative Farm)
• CPA (Agriculture) (Cuban Cooperative Farm)

References

1. ^ Eric Hobsbawm: Age of Extremes, 1994

• FAO production, 1986, FAO Trade vol. 40, 1986

External links

• Stalin and Collectivization, by Scott J. Reid
• "The Collectivization 'Genocide'", in Another View of Stalin, by Ludo Martens
• Tony Cliff "Marxism and the collectivisation of agriculture"

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