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  • From: Lawrence London <lfljvenaura@gmail.com>
  • To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [permaculture] Household plots and peasant farms outstrip corporate farms in output: Agriculture in Russia - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
  • Date: Mon, 18 May 2015 12:05:13 -0400

["The government, alarmed by this `resurgence of private capitalism',
passed legislation to contain it in 1939, but it continued to play an
important role in agriculture." - sounds familiar...]

Agriculture in Russia - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agriculture_in_Russia

Now then, right on with independent small family farms and (modern) peasant
sovereignty!

"The farming structure has changed, and the relatively small family farms
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_farms> that have emerged and grown
stronger in the new market environment are now producing in aggregate value
more than the total output of large corporate farms that succeeded the
traditional collectives."

Fascinating:

" Russia's agricultural privatisation programme can be traced back to
1989–90, when Soviet legislation under Gorbachev
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikhail_Gorbachev> allowed, first, the
creation of non-state business enterprises in the form of cooperatives; and
second, legalized private ownership of land by individuals (the November
1990 Law of Land Reform). While household plots
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_plot> cultivated by employees of
collective farms and other rural residents had played a key role in Russian
agriculture since the 1930s, legislation enabling independent private farms
outside the collectivist framework was passed only in November 1990.

The Law on Peasant Farms adopted in December 1990 was followed by laws and
decrees that defined the legal organizational forms of large agricultural
enterprises, the legal aspects of land ownership, and the procedures for
certifying and exercising ownership rights. Specifically, agricultural land
was denationalized, and its ownership (together with the ownership of other
farm assets) was legally transferred from the state to the ownership of
kolkhozes <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kolkhoz>. But at the same time
imposed a ten-year moratorium on buying and selling privately owned land

The new legal environment created expectations among Western scholars and
Russian reform advocates that family farms would emerge in large numbers
and the large-scale collective farms would be restructured. But as it
turned out, few peasants were interested in establishing individual farms,
and management and operating practices inside large agricultural
enterprises remained largely unchanged despite formal reorganization.[1]
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agriculture_in_Russia#cite_note-brooks-1> The
lack of enthusiasm for the creation of private farms was attributed to
inadequate rural infrastructure, which did not provide processing and
marketing services for small producers and also to the fear that families
striking out on their own might lose eligibility for social services that
were traditionally provided by the local corporate farm instead of the
municipality.[2]
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agriculture_in_Russia#cite_note-obrien-2>

Starting in 1993, privatized kolkhoz <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kolkhoz>
and sovkhoz <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovkhoz> became a "corporate
farm". These farms were legally reorganized as common stock companies,
limited liability partnerships, or agricultural production cooperatives and
turned over, usually in their entirety, to the joint ownership of
agricultural workers and pensioners. These farms continued to operate
largely as they had done under the Soviet system. Today, the term
"corporate farm" is an all-inclusive phrase describing the various
organizational forms that arose in the process of privatisation without
involving distribution of physical parcels of land to individuals.

In diametric opposition to corporate farms is the individual farm sector,
which consists of the traditional household plots
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_plot> and the newly formed peasant
farms
<http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Peasant_farm&action=edit&redlink=1>
."
Household plot
>From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

*Household plot* is a legally defined farm type in all former socialist
countries in CIS
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commonwealth_of_Independent_States> and CEE
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_and_Eastern_Europe>. This is a small
plot of land (typically less than 0.5 hectares) attached to a rural
residence. The household plot is primarily cultivated for subsistence and
its traditional purpose since the Soviet
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_Union> times has been to provide the
family with food. Surplus products from the household plot are sold to
neighbors, relatives, and often also in farmer markets in nearby towns. The
household plot was the only form of private or family farming
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_farm> allowed during the Soviet era,
when household plots of rural people coexisted in a symbiotic relationship
with large collective and state farms <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kolkhoz>.
Since 1990, the household plots are classified as one of the two components
of the individual farm sector, the other being peasant farms
<http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Peasant_farms&action=edit&redlink=1>
– independent family farms established for commercial production on much
larger areas of agricultural land (typically 10-50 hectares). In terms of
legal organization, household plots are natural (physical) persons
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_person>, whereas peasant farms
generally are legal (juridical) persons
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_person>.

Peasant Farms

peasant farms
<http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Peasant_farms&action=edit&redlink=1>
– independent family farms established for commercial production on much
larger areas of agricultural land (typically 10-50 hectares). In terms of
legal organization, household plots are natural (physical) persons
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_person>, whereas peasant farms
generally are legal (juridical) persons
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_person>.
History

In Czarist Russia <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Czarist_Russia>, the plot (
*usad'ba*) was usually adjacent to the peasant's house. Here the peasants
traditionally grew vegetables, hemp (a source of oil and livestock feed)
and a little fruit. Gardens varied in size; they could be as much as a
hectare, but most were smaller.[1]
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_plot#cite_note-1> The plot was
normally in the hereditary tenure of the household, and not subject to
repartition <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repartition> (unlike the
peasants' holdings in the open fields
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_field_system>).

In the later 19th century the growth of towns and cities in central Russia
encouraged the development of market gardening and truck farming in this
region. By the eve of the Revolution the garden economy was developing
quickly. A further stimulus was provided in the first years of the
Revolution by the Bolshevik policy of requisitioning peasant produce. Fruit
and vegetables were exempt from this policy, and this resulted in a strong
swing from grain farming to kitchen and market gardening. In the
grain-producing regions (Black-Earth belt and North Caucasia) the garden
economy increased its share of peasant commodity production from 3.3% in
1913 to 12.2% in 1920, while the field economy declined from 62.6% to 39.3%
in the same period. Market gardening continued to develop during the 1920s.[
2] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_plot#cite_note-2>

The mass collectivization
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collectivization_in_the_Soviet_Union> decree
of January 1930 made no mention of garden plots, and in many areas the
local Communist authorities abolished them. But in March 1930, after the
chaos and peasant resistance engendered by the all-out drive, the right of
the peasant to have a personal plot was recognised. No maximum size was
agreed at this stage, however, and the garden plot remained in a
legislative limbo until the kolkhoz model charter of February 1935.

This charter specified that plots could vary from one-quarter to one-half
hectare, and up to 1 hectare in special districts. The legislation regarded
individual peasants as the holders but in practice plots were still in
household tenure. The private plots were responsible for a significant
fraction of agricultural production, and provided the peasants with a large
part of their food and income. In 1938 they accounted for 21.5% of
agricultural produce. The average peasant household earned about twice as
much from marketings from the private plot as from its work on collective
land.

By the late 1930s market gardening, with the private plot as its base, was
perhaps becoming the dominant part of agriculture in the Black-Sea
hinterland and the truck-gardening areas around big cities like Moscow and
Leningrad. The government, alarmed by this `resurgence of private
capitalism', passed legislation to contain it in 1939, but it continued to
play an important role in agriculture.[3]
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_plot#cite_note-3>



  • [permaculture] Household plots and peasant farms outstrip corporate farms in output: Agriculture in Russia - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, Lawrence London, 05/18/2015

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