|
Czechoslovakia Agriculture
Even before World War II, industrialization in Czechoslovakia
had substantially reduced the relative importance of agriculture
in the economy. Before the KSC gained control of the government,
Czechoslovak agriculture consisted primarily of small to mid-size
family farms with an efficiency on a par with most of Europe. The
situation did not change until 1949, when the KSC initiated a
policy of collectivization. The pace of collectivization was
rather gradual until the late 1950s and was generally more
thorough in the Czech lands than in Slovakia. Collectivization
was essentially completed by 1960. Large numbers of farmers,
particularly the young, left agriculture for more attractive
industrial jobs. In the 1960s, the active farm population
consisted largely of women and older men.
Under communist rule, agriculture received much less
attention and investment funding than industry. Partly because of
this fact, agricultural output grew slowly, not regaining prewar
levels of production until the 1960s. Falling productivity and
the need to increase farm output to reduce agricultural imports
eventually drew official attention to agriculture. A principal
government goal was to encourage large-scale farming that could
benefit from modern technologies and powerful farm equipment.
Proceeding slowly during the 1980s, consolidation of farms
accelerated in the 1970s. Most of the larger cooperatives
encompassed several villages and raised a variety of crops and
livestock. In the 1960s, in an effort to increase farm incomes,
the government raised the prices of farm products; during the
previous decade, by contrast, prices for farm produce had been
kept low, partly to extract workers and investment funds for the
expansion of industry. By the early 1970s, the average farm
income reportedly had reached parity with that of urban white-
collar workers. The farm labor force of the 1980s was relatively
young (45 percent was under 40 years of age in 1980) and well
educated. The performance of the agricultural sector improved
markedly during the 1970s and the first half of the 1980s. In
1960 the official index of gross agricultural output (in constant
1980 prices) had stood at 96, compared with 100 in 1936. In 1970
the index reached 116.8, and by 1980 it had increased to 143.
Between 1981 and 1985, according to official sources, total
agricultural production increased by 9.8 percent over the 1980
level.
The total land area of postwar Czechoslovakia is nearly 12.8
million hectares, of which almost 6.8 million hectares are
considered agricultural land. The remaining land is classified as
nonagricultural and includes 4.5 million hectares of forests. In
the mid-1980s, agricultural activity was spread throughout the
country. Urbanization and industrialization had slowly but
steadily reduced the amount of agricultural land; it declined by
over 600,000 hectares between 1948 and the late 1970s. In 1984
irrigation facilities existed for over 322,000 hectares, a little
over 6 percent of the arable land. In addition, as of 1980 the
country had 1.3 million hectares of drained area, constituting
about 18 percent of all agricultural land. Extensive additional
irrigation and drainage had high priority in agricultural
planning, despite the heavy costs of these procedures, because
there was very little new land that could be brought under
cultivation less expensively. The small amount of irrigated land
made crop production heavily dependent on weather conditions.
In 1985 some 95 percent of the country's agricultural land
was in the socialist sector. The basic unit of production in the
mid-1980s was the "unified agricultural cooperative," or farmers'
collective. Collective farms had increased in area by 6.5 times
since 1950. In 1985 there were 1,677 collectives with 997,798
members. In 1985 there were 226 state farms, which were
officially owned and operated by the government and which
employed 166,432 workers. In 1985 collective farms held about 4.3
million hectares (plus about 87,000 hectares in private plots),
and state farms held 2.1 million hectares. Members of collective
farms were permitted to cultivate personal plots of one-half
hectare or less and to maintain some livestock. Such personal
plots had reached a peak of popularity in the early 1960s, when
they had accounted for 355,000 hectares. By 1975 their area had
decreased to 171,000 hectares. Production from personal plots was
minor and served primarily as a food source for the cultivator.
Private farmers owned only 404,000 hectares, consisting mainly of
small farms in the hill country of Slovakia. By 1980 there were
only 150,000 such small farms operating. In 1982, however, the
government introduced measures to encourage private small-scale
animal breeding and fruit and vegetable cultivation. Planning
authorities did not expect that this activity would be the main
source of income for small farmers, and they limited the land
used for this purpose primarily to that reclaimed from currently
unused, somewhat marginal agricultural land, estimated at 100,000
hectares in 1984. The government hoped, however, that a large
proportion of demand for fruit and green vegetables, as well as
for meat, would be satisfied in this way. In 1984, according to
official reports, small-scale private producers accounted for
about 10 percent of meat production, 38 percent of vegetable
production, and 64 percent of fruit production. A secondary
purpose of the government measures--land reclamation--was a
matter of considerable urgency because of the decline in
agricultural land that took place in the 1970s and early 1980s.
Government policy encouraged cooperation and specialization
among the various agricultural units. Both informal and formal
arrangements existed. Mutual aid in terms of machinery or labor
for particular tasks had long been practiced among neighboring
farms, and this continued under the collectivized farming system.
More formal arrangements took shape in the 1960s and expanded in
the 1970s. Many of these took the form of "joint agricultural
enterprises," entities that somewhat resembled stock companies.
Some cooperative organizations specialized in such activities as
fattening of hogs or cattle, production of eggs or drying and
production of feed mixtures. Others offered agrochemical,
construction, land improvement, or marketing services. A large
number engaged in multiple activities.
Management of most large farms is organized hierarchically on
three levels. On large cooperative farms, an assembly of members
or their elected representatives is legally responsible for farm
operation, although a committee and its chairman carry out daily
management of operation. In practice, the assembly functions
largely to ratify decisions already made by the chairman. As
cooperative farms have increased in size, the authority of the
assembly of members has declined. "Boards of economic
management," consisting of the chairman and a staff of experts on
various operations, have taken over the most important management
functions. The second echelon of management in large cooperatives
or state farms has responsibility for smaller operations in
either a specific area or a particular branch of production. The
third level of management organizes the labor force performing
the farm work, such as the field brigades. The chairman of a
cooperative or the director of a state farm holds most of the
power in the organization, and the subordinate levels are
severely restricted in their decision making.
Crop cultivation has slowly become less important in the
gross output of the agricultural sector. Cropping and livestock
were almost equal branches in 1960, but by 1985 crops accounted
for only 43 percent of gross agricultural output compared with 57
percent for livestock products. Main crop products in the 1980s
were wheat, barley, potatoes, sugar beets, rye, and hops (an
important export crop). Sugar, derived from sugar beet
production, is both a significant export crop (especially to hard
currency areas) and an important item of domestic consumption.
Fruit and vegetable acreage accounted for only a small part of
the cultivated area. Since the 1950s, the supply of livestock has
gradually increased because of government encouragement.
Producers have been urged to meet the demand for meat that
accompanied the rise in income levels of the population. After
the collectivization of agriculture, raising livestock
increasingly became a large-scale operation, usually undertaken
in conjunction with cropping. The major constraint to livestock
expansion has been a shortage of fodder and feed mixtures,
although government pricing policies and the labor demands of
animal husbandry have also tended to deter efforts. During the
1970s, progress was made in expanding the supplies of fodder and
feed mixtures and the country's processing capacity. However, it
remained necessary to supplement the supply of feed and fodder
through imports, which became increasingly burdensome because
they came from noncommunist countries and thus required payment
in convertible currencies.
The basic aim of agricultural policy in the mid-1980s, with
regard to both crop and livestock production, was self-
sufficiency. Record harvests in 1984 and 1985 made it possible
virtually to halt grain imports, which had amounted to about
500,000 tons per year. During the Seventh Five-Year Plan, the
government was able to reduce imports of feed grains to one-third
the level of the previous five-year plan without causing a
reduction in per capita meat consumption, an achievement
suggesting that the efficiency of animal husbandry had improved.
Performance in the agricultural sector as a whole remained uneven
in the 1980s, however. Although some outstanding farms were
obtaining excellent grain yields, the uneven quality of farm
management contributed to large discrepancies in performance
between farms.
Data as of August 1987
|
