Agriculture of the Soviet Union
Encyclopedia
Agriculture
in the Soviet Union
was organized into a system of state and collective farms, known as sovkhoz
es and kolkhoz
es, respectively. Organized on a large scale and relatively highly mechanized, the Soviet Union was one of the world's leading producers of cereals, although bad harvests (as in 1972 and 1975) necessitated imports and slowed the economy. The 1976-1980 five-year plan shifted resources to agriculture, and 1978 saw a record harvest. Cotton
, sugar beet
s, potato
es, and flax
were also major crops.
However, despite immense land resources, extensive machinery and chemical industries, and a large rural work force, Soviet agriculture was relatively unproductive, hampered in many areas by the climate
(only 10 percent of the Soviet Union's land was arable), and poor worker productivity
.
Conditions were best in the temperate black earth
belt stretching from Ukraine
through southern Russia
into the west, spanning the extreme southern portions of Siberia
.
established the USSR's system of state and collective farms when he moved to replace the NEP
with collective farming, which grouped peasants into collective farms (kolkhoz
es) and state farms (sovkhoz
es).
The sovkhozy tended to focus on larger scale production than the kolkhozy and had the ability to specialize in certain crops. The government tended to supply them with better machinery and fertilizer
s. Labor productivity (and in turn incomes) tended to be higher on the sovkhozy. Workers in state farms received wages and social benefits, whereas those on the collective farms tended to receive a portion of the net income of their farm, based, in part, on the success of the harvest
and their individual contribution.
Although accounting for a small share of cultivated area, private plots
produced a substantial share of the country's meat
, milk
, egg
s, and vegetable
s.Although never more than 4 percent of the arable land in the USSR, private plots consistently produced roughly a quarter to a third of agricultural produce. Private plots were among many attempts made to restructure Soviet farming. However, the weak worker incentives and managerial autonomy, which were the crux of the problem, were not addressed.
The private plots were also an important source of income for rural households. In 1977 families of kolkhoz members obtained 72% of their meat, 76% of their eggs and most of their potatoes and eggs from private holdings. Surplus products, as well as surplus livestock, were sold to kolkhozy and sovkhozy and also to state consumer cooperatives. Statistics may actually under-represent the total contribution of private plots to Soviet agriculture. The only time when private plots were completely banned was during collectivization, when famine took millions of lives.
Although the Soviet Union was the world's second leading agricultural producer and ranked first in the production of numerous commodities, agriculture was a net drain on the economy.
Alexei Kosygin, the Chairman
of the Council of Ministers, wanted to reorganize Soviet agriculture instead of increasing investments; he claimed that the main reason for inefficiency in the sector could be blamed on the sector's infrastructure
.
In the 1980s 3 % of the land was in private plots, which produced more than a quarter of the total agricultural output, i.e., over ten times more per area than the rest, which was in common ownership. (The Soviet figures claimed that the productivity of a soviet farmer was 20 - 25 % of that of a U.S. farmer in the 1980s.)
This was despite the fact that the Soviet Union had invested enormously to agriculture. Production costs were very high, the Soviet Union had to import food and it had widespread food shortages even though the country had a big share of the best agricultural soil in the world and a high land/population ratio.
The theory behind collectivization was that it would replace the small-scale unmechanized and inefficient farm
s that were then commonplace in the Soviet Union with large-scale mechanized farms that would produce food far more efficiently. Lenin saw private farming as a source of capitalist mentalities and hoped to replace farms with either sovkhozy which would make the farmers "proletarian" workers or kolkhozy which would at least be collective in nature. However, most observers say that despite isolated successes, collective farm
s and sovkhoz
es were inefficient, the agricultural sector being weak throughout the history of the Soviet Union.
The claims of inefficiency have, however, been criticized by Economist Joseph E. Medley of the University of Southern Maine, US. Statistics based on value rather than volume of production may give one view of reality, as public-sector food was heavily subsidized and sold at much lower prices than private-sector produce. In addition, the 2–3% of arable land allotted as private plots does not include the large area allocated to the peasants as pasturage for their private livestock; combined with land used to produce grain for fodder, the pasturage and the private plots total almost 20% of all Soviet farmland. Private farming may also be relatively inefficient, taking roughly 40% of all agricultural labor to produce only 26% of all output by value. Another problem is these criticisms tend to discuss only a small number of consumer products and do not take into account the fact that the kolkhozy and sovkhozy produced mainly grain, cotton, flax, forage, seed, and other non-consumer goods with a relatively low value per unit area. This economist admits to some inefficiency in Soviet agriculture, but claims that the failure reported by most Western experts would only be a myth. He believes the above criticisms to be ideological in nature and emphasizes that "[t]he possibility that socialized agriculture may be able to make valuable contributions to improving human welfare".
Soviet culture presented an agro-Romantic view of country life.
After the fall of Soviet Union, it has been recreated tongue-in-cheek in the albums and videos of the Moldovan group Zdob şi Zdub
.
Agriculture
Agriculture is the cultivation of animals, plants, fungi and other life forms for food, fiber, and other products used to sustain life. Agriculture was the key implement in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that nurtured the...
in the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
was organized into a system of state and collective farms, known as sovkhoz
Sovkhoz
A sovkhoz , typically translated as state farm, is a state-owned farm. The term originated in the Soviet Union, hence the name. The term is still in use in some post-Soviet states, e.g., Russia and Belarus. It is usually contrasted with kolkhoz, which is a collective-owned farm...
es and kolkhoz
Kolkhoz
A kolkhoz , plural kolkhozy, was a form of collective farming in the Soviet Union that existed along with state farms . The word is a contraction of коллекти́вное хозя́йство, or "collective farm", while sovkhoz is a contraction of советское хозяйство...
es, respectively. Organized on a large scale and relatively highly mechanized, the Soviet Union was one of the world's leading producers of cereals, although bad harvests (as in 1972 and 1975) necessitated imports and slowed the economy. The 1976-1980 five-year plan shifted resources to agriculture, and 1978 saw a record harvest. Cotton
Cotton
Cotton is a soft, fluffy staple fiber that grows in a boll, or protective capsule, around the seeds of cotton plants of the genus Gossypium. The fiber is almost pure cellulose. The botanical purpose of cotton fiber is to aid in seed dispersal....
, sugar beet
Sugar beet
Sugar beet, a cultivated plant of Beta vulgaris, is a plant whose tuber contains a high concentration of sucrose. It is grown commercially for sugar production. Sugar beets and other B...
s, potato
Potato
The potato is a starchy, tuberous crop from the perennial Solanum tuberosum of the Solanaceae family . The word potato may refer to the plant itself as well as the edible tuber. In the region of the Andes, there are some other closely related cultivated potato species...
es, and flax
Flax
Flax is a member of the genus Linum in the family Linaceae. It is native to the region extending from the eastern Mediterranean to India and was probably first domesticated in the Fertile Crescent...
were also major crops.
However, despite immense land resources, extensive machinery and chemical industries, and a large rural work force, Soviet agriculture was relatively unproductive, hampered in many areas by the climate
Climate
Climate encompasses the statistics of temperature, humidity, atmospheric pressure, wind, rainfall, atmospheric particle count and other meteorological elemental measurements in a given region over long periods...
(only 10 percent of the Soviet Union's land was arable), and poor worker productivity
Productivity
Productivity is a measure of the efficiency of production. Productivity is a ratio of what is produced to what is required to produce it. Usually this ratio is in the form of an average, expressing the total output divided by the total input...
.
Conditions were best in the temperate black earth
Chernozem
Chernozem , also known as "black land" or "black earth", is a black-coloured soil containing a high percentage of humus 7% to 15%, and high percentages of phosphoric acids, phosphorus and ammonia...
belt stretching from Ukraine
Ukraine
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...
through southern Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
into the west, spanning the extreme southern portions of Siberia
Siberia
Siberia is an extensive region constituting almost all of Northern Asia. Comprising the central and eastern portion of the Russian Federation, it was part of the Soviet Union from its beginning, as its predecessor states, the Tsardom of Russia and the Russian Empire, conquered it during the 16th...
.
History
Following a grain crisis in 1928, Joseph StalinJoseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
established the USSR's system of state and collective farms when he moved to replace the NEP
New Economic Policy
The New Economic Policy was an economic policy proposed by Vladimir Lenin, who called it state capitalism. Allowing some private ventures, the NEP allowed small animal businesses or smoke shops, for instance, to reopen for private profit while the state continued to control banks, foreign trade,...
with collective farming, which grouped peasants into collective farms (kolkhoz
Kolkhoz
A kolkhoz , plural kolkhozy, was a form of collective farming in the Soviet Union that existed along with state farms . The word is a contraction of коллекти́вное хозя́йство, or "collective farm", while sovkhoz is a contraction of советское хозяйство...
es) and state farms (sovkhoz
Sovkhoz
A sovkhoz , typically translated as state farm, is a state-owned farm. The term originated in the Soviet Union, hence the name. The term is still in use in some post-Soviet states, e.g., Russia and Belarus. It is usually contrasted with kolkhoz, which is a collective-owned farm...
es).
Agricultural labour
Stalin's campaign of forced collectivization was a major factor explaining the sector's poor performance. Collectivization relied on a system of internal passports to keep farmers tied to the land. This has been referred to as a form of "neo-serfdom", in which the Communist bureaucracy replaced the former landowners. The first response of most farmers to this loss of freedom was to slaughter and consume their farm animals. In the new state and collective farms, outside directives failed to take local growing conditions into account. Also, interference in the day-to-day affairs of peasant life often bred resentment and worker alienation across the countryside. The human toll was very large with millions, perhaps as many as 3 million, dying from famine in the wake of collectivisation. In the collective and state farms, low labor productivity was a consequence for the entire Soviet period.The sovkhozy tended to focus on larger scale production than the kolkhozy and had the ability to specialize in certain crops. The government tended to supply them with better machinery and fertilizer
Fertilizer
Fertilizer is any organic or inorganic material of natural or synthetic origin that is added to a soil to supply one or more plant nutrients essential to the growth of plants. A recent assessment found that about 40 to 60% of crop yields are attributable to commercial fertilizer use...
s. Labor productivity (and in turn incomes) tended to be higher on the sovkhozy. Workers in state farms received wages and social benefits, whereas those on the collective farms tended to receive a portion of the net income of their farm, based, in part, on the success of the harvest
Harvest
Harvest is the process of gathering mature crops from the fields. Reaping is the cutting of grain or pulse for harvest, typically using a scythe, sickle, or reaper...
and their individual contribution.
Although accounting for a small share of cultivated area, private plots
Household plot
Household plot is a legally defined farm type in all former socialist countries in CIS and CEE. This is a small plot of land attached to a rural residence. The household plot is primarily cultivated for subsistence and its traditional purpose since the Soviet times has been to provide the family...
produced a substantial share of the country's meat
Meat
Meat is animal flesh that is used as food. Most often, this means the skeletal muscle and associated fat and other tissues, but it may also describe other edible tissues such as organs and offal...
, milk
Milk
Milk is a white liquid produced by the mammary glands of mammals. It is the primary source of nutrition for young mammals before they are able to digest other types of food. Early-lactation milk contains colostrum, which carries the mother's antibodies to the baby and can reduce the risk of many...
, egg
Egg (food)
Eggs are laid by females of many different species, including birds, reptiles, amphibians, and fish, and have probably been eaten by mankind for millennia. Bird and reptile eggs consist of a protective eggshell, albumen , and vitellus , contained within various thin membranes...
s, and vegetable
Vegetable
The noun vegetable usually means an edible plant or part of a plant other than a sweet fruit or seed. This typically means the leaf, stem, or root of a plant....
s.Although never more than 4 percent of the arable land in the USSR, private plots consistently produced roughly a quarter to a third of agricultural produce. Private plots were among many attempts made to restructure Soviet farming. However, the weak worker incentives and managerial autonomy, which were the crux of the problem, were not addressed.
The private plots were also an important source of income for rural households. In 1977 families of kolkhoz members obtained 72% of their meat, 76% of their eggs and most of their potatoes and eggs from private holdings. Surplus products, as well as surplus livestock, were sold to kolkhozy and sovkhozy and also to state consumer cooperatives. Statistics may actually under-represent the total contribution of private plots to Soviet agriculture. The only time when private plots were completely banned was during collectivization, when famine took millions of lives.
Although the Soviet Union was the world's second leading agricultural producer and ranked first in the production of numerous commodities, agriculture was a net drain on the economy.
Inefficiency of collective farming
Hedrick Smith, wrote in The Russians (1976) that according to Soviet statistics, one fourth of the value of agricultural production in 1973 was produced on the private plots peasants were allowed (2% of the whole arable land).Alexei Kosygin, the Chairman
Premier of the Soviet Union
The office of Premier of the Soviet Union was synonymous with head of government of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics . Twelve individuals have been premier...
of the Council of Ministers, wanted to reorganize Soviet agriculture instead of increasing investments; he claimed that the main reason for inefficiency in the sector could be blamed on the sector's infrastructure
Infrastructure
Infrastructure is basic physical and organizational structures needed for the operation of a society or enterprise, or the services and facilities necessary for an economy to function...
.
In the 1980s 3 % of the land was in private plots, which produced more than a quarter of the total agricultural output, i.e., over ten times more per area than the rest, which was in common ownership. (The Soviet figures claimed that the productivity of a soviet farmer was 20 - 25 % of that of a U.S. farmer in the 1980s.)
This was despite the fact that the Soviet Union had invested enormously to agriculture. Production costs were very high, the Soviet Union had to import food and it had widespread food shortages even though the country had a big share of the best agricultural soil in the world and a high land/population ratio.
The theory behind collectivization was that it would replace the small-scale unmechanized and inefficient farm
Farm
A farm is an area of land, or, for aquaculture, lake, river or sea, including various structures, devoted primarily to the practice of producing and managing food , fibres and, increasingly, fuel. It is the basic production facility in food production. Farms may be owned and operated by a single...
s that were then commonplace in the Soviet Union with large-scale mechanized farms that would produce food far more efficiently. Lenin saw private farming as a source of capitalist mentalities and hoped to replace farms with either sovkhozy which would make the farmers "proletarian" workers or kolkhozy which would at least be collective in nature. However, most observers say that despite isolated successes, collective farm
Kolkhoz
A kolkhoz , plural kolkhozy, was a form of collective farming in the Soviet Union that existed along with state farms . The word is a contraction of коллекти́вное хозя́йство, or "collective farm", while sovkhoz is a contraction of советское хозяйство...
s and sovkhoz
Sovkhoz
A sovkhoz , typically translated as state farm, is a state-owned farm. The term originated in the Soviet Union, hence the name. The term is still in use in some post-Soviet states, e.g., Russia and Belarus. It is usually contrasted with kolkhoz, which is a collective-owned farm...
es were inefficient, the agricultural sector being weak throughout the history of the Soviet Union.
The claims of inefficiency have, however, been criticized by Economist Joseph E. Medley of the University of Southern Maine, US. Statistics based on value rather than volume of production may give one view of reality, as public-sector food was heavily subsidized and sold at much lower prices than private-sector produce. In addition, the 2–3% of arable land allotted as private plots does not include the large area allocated to the peasants as pasturage for their private livestock; combined with land used to produce grain for fodder, the pasturage and the private plots total almost 20% of all Soviet farmland. Private farming may also be relatively inefficient, taking roughly 40% of all agricultural labor to produce only 26% of all output by value. Another problem is these criticisms tend to discuss only a small number of consumer products and do not take into account the fact that the kolkhozy and sovkhozy produced mainly grain, cotton, flax, forage, seed, and other non-consumer goods with a relatively low value per unit area. This economist admits to some inefficiency in Soviet agriculture, but claims that the failure reported by most Western experts would only be a myth. He believes the above criticisms to be ideological in nature and emphasizes that "[t]he possibility that socialized agriculture may be able to make valuable contributions to improving human welfare".
In popular culture
After the fall of Soviet Union, it has been recreated tongue-in-cheek in the albums and videos of the Moldovan group Zdob şi Zdub
Zdob si Zdub
Zdob şi Zdub is a Moldovan band, based in Chişinău, whose work for the last several years has combined elements of hip-hop , hardcore punk and comical lyrics with traditional Romanian folk music. The name is onomatopoeic for the sound of a drum beat...
.
See also
- Agriculture in Russia
- Agriculture in the Russian Empire
- Famines in Russia and USSRFamines in Russia and USSRDroughts and famines in Russia and the USSR tended to occur on a fairly regular basis, with famine occurring every 10–13 years and droughts every 5–7 years...
- Trofim LysenkoTrofim LysenkoTrofim Denisovich Lysenko was a Soviet agronomist of Ukrainian origin, who was director of Soviet biology under Joseph Stalin. Lysenko rejected Mendelian genetics in favor of the hybridization theories of Russian horticulturist Ivan Vladimirovich Michurin, and adopted them into a powerful...