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Albania
Land Distribution and Agricultural Organization
Following Enver Hoxha's 1967 proclamation that the regime had
collectivized all of Albania's private farmland, the country's
only legal forms of agricultural production were state farms,
collective farms, and personal plots granted to members of collective
farms. The first Albanian state farm grew out of a large experimental
farm set up by Italian colonists in the 1930s. After World War
II, the government amalgamated small collective farms and transformed
them into state farms in each district. The 216 state farms, which
still controlled 24 percent of the arable land in 1991, functioned
like industrial organizations; thus, state farm workers, like
factory workers, toiled for set wages. The state farms received
the best land and equipment and a disproportionate amount of investment
monies. Collective farms were the result of government campaigns
to coerce peasants into signing over their private holdings to
cooperatives and working the land in common, according to the
instructions of the central government's economic planners. The
authorities later took gradual steps to transform collective farms
into "higher-type" farms more closely resembling state farms in
their organization. Faced with dire food shortages, the regime
in 1990 attempted to reform the agricultural system by lifting
a 200-square-meter limitation on the size of the personal plots
of collective farmmembers .
In July 1991, the government enacted a law that nullified old
property claims and regulated redistribution of the expropriated
farmlands given to collective farms after 1946. The law granted
landownership rights to members of the former collective farms
and their households without requiring compensation; it also granted
land-use rights to up to 0.4 hectares to other qualifying residents
of villages attached to collective farms. The law provided for
the inheritance of property but banned land sales and leases,
thereby blocking voluntary consolidation of tiny landholdings
and limiting farmers' access to credit by precluding the use of
land as collateral.
The government established the National Land Commission to oversee
the land reform. The minister of agriculture chaired the commission
and reported on its activities to the Council of Ministers. District
and village land commissions demarcated the land, issued ownership
titles, and compiled a land registry.
Albania's land redistribution program proceeded rapidly but unevenly.
It met especially stiff resistance in the country's mountainous
northeastern regions where clans anxious to stake out the boundaries
of their traditional family lands tried to stop large numbers
of postwar immigrants from gaining title to them. Land disputes
threatened to trigger blood feuds. Local officials also impeded
the reform process. The central government countered by threatening
to prosecute anyone who seized land illegally. Under the land-distribution
program, Albania's agricultural sector would gain about 380,000
small family farms averaging about 1.4 hectares in size and often
made up of two or three plots. In mountain areas the parcels were
significantly smaller. In Pukė, for example, the average size
was just over 0.5 hectares, and in Kukės, almost 0.9 hectares.
Western economists estimated that 35 percent of the new farms
would not be economically viable and expressed concern that, unless
restrictions on land sales were lifted, inheritance would lead
to land fragmentation and hamper development. Fearing that smallholdings
would not provide sustenance, the government amended the land
law to provide for income support of farmers in mountainous areas.
As privatization progressed, some families and owners of contiguous
fields began to form private cooperatives to take advantage of
economies of scale.
Left in limbo by the land reform were the 216 state farms and
their 155,000 employees, who accounted for about 20 percent of
the agricultural labor force. State farms contributed about 30
percent of the value of the country's agricultural output and
supplied city dwellers with most of their dairy products, fruits,
and vegetables. The state farms' yields normally outstripped those
of the cooperative farms by a third or more because the state
farms benefited from richer soils, more mechanization, and easier
access to farm services, government finance, and transportation.
The breakdown of the communist structure dealt the state farms
serious setbacks. By mid-1991 lines of authority had snapped,
equipment and buildings had been plundered, and the amount of
cultivated land had decreased by half. Although it planned to
dissolve sixty money-losing state farms in the mountainous northeast,
the government generally spared the state farms from redistribution
because their breakup would lead to serious land fragmentation
problems and reduce urban food supplies. Pasturelands and forests
were also exempted. Western economic analysts concluded that some
of the state farms could turn a profit and that foreign companies
might follow the lead of one Italian firm that had entered into
a joint venture with a state farm.
Data as of April 1992
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