Collective farming
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Collective farming and communal farming are various types of "agricultural production in which multiple farmers run their holdings as a joint enterprise".[1] There are two broad types of communal farms: agricultural cooperatives, in which member-owners jointly engage in farming activities as a collective; and state farms, which are owned and directly run by a centralized government. The process by which farmland is aggregated is called collectivization. In some countries (including the Soviet Union, the Eastern Bloc countries, China and Vietnam), there have been both state-run and cooperative-run variants. For example, the Soviet Union had both kolkhozy (cooperative-run farms) and sovkhozy (state-run farms).
Pre-20th century history
A small group of farming or herding families living together on a jointly managed piece of land is one of the most common living arrangements in all of human history, having co-existed and competed with more individualistic forms of ownership (as well as organized state ownership) since the beginnings of agriculture.
Private ownership came to predominate in much of the Western world and is therefore better studied. The process by which Western Europe's communal land and other property became private is a fundamental question behind views of property.
Case studies
Mexico
Under the
Following the Mexican Revolution, a new constitution in 1917 abolished any remnant of feudal-like rights hacienda owners had over common lands and offered the development of ejidos: communal farms formed on land purchased from the large estates by the Mexican government.
Iroquois and Huron of North America
The Huron had an essentially
The Iroquois had a similar communal system of land distribution. The tribe owned all lands but gave out tracts to the different clans for further distribution among households for cultivation. The land would be redistributed among the households every few years, and a clan could request a redistribution of tracts when the Clan Mothers' Council gathered.[5] Those clans that abused their allocated land or otherwise did not take care of it would be warned and eventually punished by the Clan Mothers' Council by having the land redistributed to another clan.[6] Land property was really only the concern of the women, since it was the women's job to cultivate food and not the men's.[5]
The Clan Mothers' Council also reserved certain areas of land to be worked by the women of all the different clans. Food from such lands, called kěndiǔ"gwǎ'ge' hodi'yěn'tho, would be used at festivals and large council gatherings.[6]
Russian Empire
The
The vast majority of Russian peasants held their land in
Collectivization under state socialism
The Soviet Union introduced collective farming in its constituent
Soviet Union
As part of the first five-year plan, forced collectivization was introduced in the Soviet Union by general secretary Joseph Stalin in the late 1920s as a way, according to the policies of socialist leaders, to boost agricultural production through the organization of land and labor into large-scale collective farms (kolkhozy). At the same time, Joseph Stalin argued that collectivization would free poor peasants from economic servitude under the kulaks (farmland owners).
The
In 1932–1933, an estimated 11 million people, 3–7 million in Ukraine alone, died from
Collectivization throughout the
The efficiency of collective farms in the USSR is debatable. A Soviet article in March 1975 found that 27% of the total value of Soviet agricultural produce was produced by private farms despite the fact that they only consisted of less than 1% of arable land (approximately 20 million acres), making them roughly 40 times more efficient than collective farms.[14]
Romania
In Romania, land collectivization began in 1948 and continued for over more than a decade until its virtual eradication in 1962.[15]
In Romania, force sometimes had to be used to enforce collective agricultural practices. Collective farming in Romania was an attempt to implement the USSR's communist blueprint. These attempts often fell short. By strictly adhering to this Soviet blueprint, the implementation of communism in Romania inevitably created dilemmas and contributions that led to violence. Kligman and Verdery state "The violence collectivization, emerges then, less, as an abhoration than as a product of sociocultural shaping and of deep problems with how the soviet blueprint came to be implemented... instead of a gradual and integrated process of moving from one form of society to another, Romanian society in the Soviet orbit was being completely rearticulated, a process in which violence was inevitable."[16]
On the other hand, as Kligman and Verdery explain, "Collectivization brought undeniable benefits to some rural inhabitants, especially those who had owned little or no land. It freed them from laboring on the fields of others, and it increased their control over wages, lending to their daily existence a stability previously unknown to them."[16]
Bulgaria
Collective farms in the People's Republic of Bulgaria, introduced in 1945, were called Labour cooperative agricultural holdings (Bulgarian: Трудово кооперативно земеделско стопанство, romanized: Trudovo kooperativno zemedelsko stopanstvo).[17]
Hungary
In
In the spring of 1955 the drive for collectivization was renewed, again using physical force to encourage membership, but this second wave also ended in dismal failure. After the events of the
Czechoslovakia
In
The third and final phase forbade possession of land above 50 hectares (120 acres) for one family. This phase was carried out in April 1948, two months after the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia took power by force. Farms started to be collectivized, mostly under the threat of sanctions. The most obstinate farmers were persecuted and imprisoned. The most common form of collectivization was agricultural cooperative (Czech: Jednotné zemědělské družstvo, JZD; Slovak: Jednotné roľnícke družstvo, JRD). The collectivization was implemented in three stages (1949–1952, 1953–1956, 1956–1969) and officially ended with the 1960 implementation of the constitution establishing the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, which made private ownership illegal.
Many early cooperatives collapsed and were recreated. 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 subsidize 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 (involuntarily) 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 incentive 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 over-employment.
In the late 1970s, the
After the
East Germany
Collective farms in the
Poland
The Polish name of a collective farm was rolnicza spółdzielnia produkcyjna, 'agricultural production cooperative'. Collectivisation in Poland was stopped in 1956; later, nationalisation was supported.
Yugoslavia
Collective farming was introduced as a
China
At the end of the
During 1954–1955, farmers in many areas began pooling their land, capital resources, and labor into beginning-level agricultural producers' cooperatives (chuji nongye hezuoshe).[32]: 109 In the complex system of beginning-level agricultural producers' cooperatives, farmers received a share of the harvest based on a combination of how much labor and how much land they contributed to the cooperative.[32]: 109–110
By June 1956, over 60% of rural households had been collectivized into higher-level agricultural producers' cooperatives (gaoji nongye hezuoshe), a structure that was similar to Soviet collective farmering via kolkhozy.[32]: 110 In these cooperatives, tens of households pooled land and draft animals.[32]: 110 Adult members of the cooperative were credited with work points based on how much labor they had provided at which tasks.[32]: 110 At the end of the year, the collective deducted taxes and fixed-price sales to the state, and the cooperative retained seed for the next year as well as some investment and welfare funds.[32]: 110 The collective then distributed to the households the remainder of the harvest and some of the money received from sales to the state.[32]: 110 The distribution was based partly on work points accrued by the adult members of a household, and partly at a standard rate by age and sex.[32]: 110 These cooperatives also lent small amounts of land back to households individually on which the households could grow crops to consume directly or sell at market.[32]: 110–111 Apart from the large-scale communization during the Great Leap Forward, higher-level agricultural producers' collective were generally the dominant form of rural collectivization in China.[32]: 111
During
Collectivization of land via the commune system facilitated China's rapid industrialization through the state's control of food production and procurement.
Both land reform movement and collectivization largely left in place the social systems in the
After the
A 2017 study found that Chinese peasants slaughtered massive numbers of draft animals as a response to collectivization, as this would allow them to keep the meat and hide, and not transfer the draft animals to the collectives.[40] The study estimates that "the animal loss during the movement was 12 to 15 percent, or 7.4-9.5 million dead. Grain output dropped by 7 percent due to lower animal inputs and lower productivity."[40]
Mongolia
North Korea
In the late 1990s, the collective farming system collapsed under a 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 was accused of diverting international relief supplies to its armed forces. Agriculture in North Korea has suffered tremendously from natural disasters, a lack of fertile land, and government mismanagement, often causing the nation to rely on foreign aid as its primary source of food.
Vietnam
The
Following the
In an historic shift in 1986, the
Despite the reforms however, over 50% of all farms in Vietnam remain collective cooperatives (over 15,000 farming cooperatives in Vietnam), and almost all farmers being members of some kind of cooperative.[45] The state also heavily encourages collective cooperative farming over private farming.[46]
Cuba
In the initial years that followed the Cuban Revolution, government authorities experimented with agricultural and farming production cooperatives. Between 1977 and 1983, farmers began to collectivize into CPAs – Cooperativa de Producción Agropecuaria (Agricultural Production Cooperatives). Farmers were encouraged to sell their land to the state for the establishment of a cooperative farm, receiving payments for a period of 20 years while also sharing in the fruits of the CPA. Joining a CPA allowed individuals who were previously dispersed throughout the countryside to move to a centralized location with increased access to electricity, medical care, housing, and schools. Democratic practice tends to be limited to business decisions and is constrained by the centralized economic planning of the Cuban system.
Another type of agricultural production cooperative in Cuba is UBPC – Unidad Básica de Producción Cooperativa (Basic Unit of Cooperative Production). The law authorizing the creation of UBPCs was passed on 20 September 1993. It has been used to transform many state farms into UBPCs, similar to the transformation of Russian sovkhozes (state farms) into kolkhozes (collective farms) since 1992. The law granted indefinite usufruct to the workers of the UBPC in line with its goal of linking the workers to the land. It established material incentives for increased production by tying workers' earnings to the overall production of the UBPC, and increased managerial autonomy and workers' participation in the management of the workplace.
Tanzania
The move to a collective farming method in Tanzania was based on the Soviet model for rural development. In 1967, President Julius Nyerere issued "Socialism and Rural Development" which proposed the creation of Ujamaa Villages. Since the majority of the rural population was spread out, and agriculture was traditionally undertaken individually, the rural population had to be forced to move together, to farm communally. Following forced migration, incentive to participate in communal farming activities was encouraged by government recognition.
These incentives, in addition to encouraging a degree of participation, also lured those whose primary interests were not the common good to the Ujamaa villages. This, in addition to the Order of 1973 dictating that all people had to live in villages (Operation Vijiji)[47] eroded the sustainability of communal projects. In order for the communal farms to be successful, each member of the village would have to contribute to the best of their ability. Due to lack of sufficient foreign exchange, mechanization of the labour was impossible, therefore it was essential that every villager contributed to manual labour.
Laos
Other collective farming
Europe
In the European Union, collective farming is fairly common and agricultural cooperatives hold a 40% market share among the 27 member states. In the Netherlands, cooperative agriculture holds a market share of approximately 70%, second only to Finland.[48] In France, cooperative agriculture represents 40% of the national food industry's production and nearly 90 Billion € in gross revenue, covering one out of three food brands in the country.[49][50]
There are also
India
In Indian villages a single field (normally a plot of three to five acres) may be farmed collectively by the villagers, who each offer labour as a devotional offering, possibly for one or two days per cropping season. The resulting crop belongs to no one individual, and is used as an offering. The labour input is the offering of the peasant in their role as priests. The wealth generated by the sale of the produce belongs to the Gods and hence is Apaurusheya or impersonal. Shrambhakti (labour contributed as devotional offering) is the key instrument for generation of internal resources. The benefits of the harvest are most often redistributed in the village for common good as well as individual need – not as loan or charity, but as divine grace (prasad). The recipient is under no obligation to repay it and no interest need be paid on such gifts.[citation needed]
Israel
Collective farming was also implemented in kibbutzim in Israel, which began in 1909 as a unique combination of Zionism and socialism – known as Labor Zionism. The concept has faced occasional criticism as economically inefficient and over-reliant on subsidized credit.[53]
A lesser-known type of collective farm in Israel is moshav shitufi (lit. collective settlement), where production and services are managed collectively, as in a kibbutz, but consumption decisions are left to individual households. In terms of cooperative organization, moshav shitufi is distinct from the much more common moshav (or moshav ovdim), essentially a village-level service cooperative, not a collective farm.
In 2006 there were 40 moshavim shitufi'im in Israel, compared with 267 kibbutzim.[54]
Collective farming in Israel differs from collectivism in communist states in that it is voluntary. However, including moshavim, various forms of collective farming have traditionally been and remain the primary agricultural model, as there are only a small number of completely private farms in Israel outside of the moshavim.
Mexico
In Mexico the Ejido system provided poor farmers with collective use rights to agricultural land.
Canada and United States
The
Until recently Western Canada had a centralised wheat board where farmers were usually obligated to sell their wheat to the province which sold the product at a high collective price. Ontario currently has a milk board which obliges most milk producers to sell their milk to the province at a regulated quality and price.
A movement of voluntary collective farming started in 2008 in the Research Triangle under the name of crop mob. The idea spread throughout the United States and less than 10 years later this particular type of incidental, spontaneous, social-media driven collective farming was reported in over 70 places.[56]
In popular culture
In the 2021 Telugu film Sreekaram, the main protagonist encourages people for a community farming.
The 1929 Soviet film
The 1930 Soviet Ukrainian film Earth features a peasant encouraging his village in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic to embrace collectivization, which they do after he is killed by kulaks.
See also
- Camphill Movement – Special education
- Dekulakization – Political repression of prosperous peasants (kulaks) in the USSR (1929–1932)
- Work unit – Danwei; a state institution of employment and political organization in China
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- ^ a b Kligman, G., & Verdery, K. (2011). Peasants under siege: the collectivization of Romanian agriculture, 1949–1962. Princeton University Press.
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- Longo Mai
- Camphill movement
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- Conquest, Robert, The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine (1986).
- Johansen, Bruce E., ed. (1999). The Encyclopedia of Native American Economic History. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.
- Mandel, Ernest (1995). Trotsky as alternative. London: ISBN 978-1859840856.
- McHenry, Dean E. Jr. (December 1977)"Peasant Participation in Communal Farming: The Tanzanian Experience" in African Studies Review, Vol. 20, No. 3, Peasants in Africa, pp. 43–63.
- Stites, Sara Henry (1905). Economics of the Iroquois. Lancaster, Pennsylvania: The New Era Printing Company.
- Trigger, Bruce G. (1969). The Huron Farmers of the North. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. ISBN 9780030795503.
- Yeager, Rodger (July 1982) "Demography and Development Policy in Tanzania" in The Journal of Developing Areas, Vol. 16, No. 4, pp. 489–510.
External links
- Stalin and Collectivization, by Scott J. Reid Archived 23 November 2016 at the Wayback Machine
- "The Collectivization 'Genocide'", in Another View of Stalin, by Ludo Martens
- Tony Cliff "Marxism and the collectivisation of agriculture"
- Kiernan, Ben (2007). Blood and soil: a world history of genocide and extermination from Sparta to Darfur. Yale University Press. pp. 724. ISBN 978-0-300-10098-3.