Socialist Agriculture In Transition

Because of altered investment priorities, policymakers in socialist countries can no longer increase the resources devoted to agriculture as they have in the past. Instead, they must seek alternative means of improving agricultural performance. One approach has been to change the structure of socialist agriculture and to foster organizational changes within agricultural units. The contributors to this volume evaluate such reforms and weigh their implications for agricultural output and trade. They examine the normless links being introduced in the USSR and compare Soviet experiences with the successes of Chinese and Hungarian reorganizations; describe and analyze the changes being implemented in the German Democratic Republic, Yugoslavia, and Vietnam; and pay particular attention to the role of Polish agriculture in the production crisis and to agriculture's potential for improving Poland's overall economic performance. The contributors also address issues of infrastructure development, the incentives being developed to foster more efficient allocation of resources within the agricultural sector, and the likely growth of East-West and intra-socialist agricultural trade.

"Josef C. Brada is professor of economics at Arizona State University. He is the former editor of Comparative Economic Studies and the current editor of the Journal of Comparative Economics and Soviet and East European Foreign Trade. Karl-Eugen Wädekin was professor of international and East European agrarian policies, Justus-Liebig-Universität, Giessen, and researcher at the Zentrum fÃ-r kontinentale Agrar- und Wirtschaftsforschung, Giessen. He is currently teaching and conducting research at the Department of Economics and the Slavic Center at the University of California, Berkeley. His books include Agriculture in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union: Comparative Studies."

Introduction -- The Normless Link: A New Era in Socialist Agriculture? -- Labor Incentives in Soviet Kolkhozy -- Contract Brigades and Normless Teams in Soviet Agriculture -- The Zveno and Collective Contracts: The End of Soviet Collectivization? -- The Contract Brigades: Towards a Neo-collectivism in Soviet Agriculture? -- Agrarian Structures and Policies in the USSR, China, and Hungary: A Comparative View -- Problems of Soviet Agriculture -- Did the Kolkhoz System Really Fulfill the Initial Aims of the Party in the 1930s? -- Food Consumption Patterns in the Soviet Union -- The Experiments in Georgia, 1974-1984: Quest for a New Organization in the Soviet Agricultural System -- The Role of Agriculture in the Polish Economic Crisis and Recovery -- An Overview of the Role of Agriculture in the Polish Economic Crisis -- Prospects for Polish Agriculture in the 1980s -- Polish Agriculture and Martial Law, or What Happened to the Smychka? -- The Development Strategy of Agriculture in Poland1 -- Planning the Development of Agriculture Under the Conditions of Polish Economic Reform -- Hungarian Agriculture: Evolving to Maintain Progress? -- Hungarian Agriculture in the 1970s and 1980s -- Promotion of Efficiency in the Agriculture of the German Democratic Republic -- The Reform of Agricultural Prices in the German Democratic Republic -- Energy Consumption in the GDR's Agriculture -- Yugoslavia: The Agrarian Sector in a Labor-Managed Economy -- Recent Agricultural Policy in Yugoslavia: A Return to the Private Sector? -- Price Policy and Price Formation in the Yugoslav Agro-Food Sector -- Agricultural Policies and Reform in China and Vietnam -- The New Economic Policy in the Chinese Countryside -- Specific Aspects of the Collectivization of Wet-Rice Cultivation: Vietnamese Experience -- Allocating Resources to Promote Efficiency and Structural Change in Agriculture -- Comparative Performance of Agricultural Output, Inputs, and Productivity in Eastern Europe, 1965-83 -- Inter-regional and Inter-organizational Differences in Agricultural Efficiency in Czechoslovakia -- The USSR: The Livestock Feed Issue -- Rural Infrastructure in the Soviet Union: Roads and Other Priorities -- International Trade and the Agrarian Sector -- Hungary as a Trade Partner for Socialist and Market Economies -- Current Issues in East-West Trade Relations -- Changing Perspectives in East-West Agriculture Trade: United States-Soviet Relations, 1972-84 -- Assessing the Significance of the Soviet Market for United States Agricultural Exports -- East European Agricultural Trade Policy