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Romania Farm Organization
Cooperative and state farms were the two primary types
of farm
organization, although a significant number of small
private farms
continued to exist in the 1980s. State farms accounted for
more
than 17 percent and cooperatives nearly 75 percent of all
arable
land. In 1982 cooperatives employed 2.2 million farmers,
while
state and private farms employed about 400,000 each.
The formation of state farms, which were intended to be
the
rural equivalent of socialist industrial enterprises, had
begun as
early as 1945. These ideologically favored farms received
the best
lands expropriated in 1949 and during the major
collectivization
campaign of the 1958-62 period, and they had priority
access to
machinery, chemicals, and irrigation water. Because of
these
advantages, state farms reported higher crop yields than
did
cooperative farms. Like other state enterprises, state
farms
operated according to the directives of the central
government.
Workers received a fixed wage in return for their labor on
the farm
and had no private plot rights. Their incomes in the 1980s
approached those of urban workers.
Although cooperative farms owned their land and certain
basic
equipment, they had little more autonomy than the state
farms.
Their directors routinely accepted production directives
from
Bucharest with little objection. The cooperatives were
told what
crops to grow, how to grow them, and how much to deliver
to the
state. Many smaller cooperatives were ordered to combine
into
associations during the 1970s and 1980s to pool their
assets.
According to a decree issued by the Council of State,
cooperative
farmers were required to work at least 300 days per year
on the
cooperative, and they were subject to transfer to other
farms or
even to construction and lumber work sites if their own
cooperative
had no work for them. Between 40 and 60 percent of the
average
cooperative farm income was derived from the sale of
products from
private plots. Despite this supplementary income,
cooperative
farmers earned only about 60 percent as much as their
counterparts
on state farms in the 1980s. Cooperative farmers also had
much
smaller pension benefits.
As late as 1988 almost 9.5 percent of the country's 15
million
hectares of agricultural land remained in private hands.
As a rule,
this land was located in relatively inaccessible
mountainous
regions, where use of heavy machinery was impractical. In
addition,
in 1988 cooperative farms reserved some 922,000 hectares
(about 6
percent of all arable land) for private plots, which were
cultivated by families working on the cooperatives. These
plots
averaged 1,500 square meters in area, but in rugged
terrain they
could be considerably larger. Thus in the late 1980s, the
private
sector was still cultivating more than 15 percent of the
country's
agricultural land--the highest total in Eastern Europe
after Poland
and Yugoslavia. Privately owned land could not be sold,
nor could
it be inherited by persons unable to tend it adequately.
Even official government statistics revealed that
private
agriculture was more than four times as productive as
socialized
agriculture in the cultivation of fruit; twice as
productive in
grain growing and poultry raising, and 60 percent more
efficient in
milk, beef, pork, and vegetable production. In 1987 the
private
sector produced half the sheep, 40 percent of the beef, 28
percent
of the pork, and 63 percent of the fruit output.
Despite the higher productivity of private agriculture
and its
major contribution to total farm output, the Ceausescu
regime
systematically penalized the nonsocialist sector. At the
very time
most of the communist world was beginning to permit
peasants to
lease larger tracts for longer periods, Romania was
actually
reducing the area under private cultivation--from 967,500
hectares
in 1965 to 922,841 in 1985. Beginning in 1987, an area of
at least
500 square meters (or one-third) of each private plot was
required
to be sown in wheat, and the harvest was to be traded to
the state
for the yield from an equivalent amount of land cultivated
by the
cooperative farm. This policy was designed to discourage
peasants
from spending an inordinate amount of time cultivating
their
private plots instead of working for the cooperative. Its
effect,
however, was to further demoralize the farm population and
thus
make it less productive.
In the late 1980s, the systematization program aimed to
subordinate privately owned land and private plots on
cooperative
farms to the regional agro-industrial councils and thereby
tighten
central control of private farming
(see Administration and Control
, this ch.). Systematization would eliminate many of the
plots, as
villages were levelled to create vast fields for
socialized
farming. This policy directly contradicted the
government's mandate
in the 1980s that the population essentially feed itself
by
cultivating small plots (even lawns and public parks had
been
converted to vegetable gardens) and breeding poultry and
rabbits.
Data as of July 1989
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