De-socialization of Russian Farms
By David J. Theroux • Tuesday September 2, 2008 5:41 PM PDT • 6 Comments
After nearly eighty years, the New York Times reports that Russia may now finally be moving to de-collectivize and privatize its farmlands. From 1928 to 1933, Stalin pursued a ruthless drive to collectivize all agriculture in the Soviet Union, and implemented a series of events in the Ukraine (“the breadbasket of Europe”) to crush the people seeking independence from Russian rule. The result was massive resistance and a catastrophic famine—one of the greatest mass starvations in modern world history, as is documented in Robert Conquest’s seminal book, The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine. Now, perhaps the horrendous “experiment” in farm collectivization may come to an end:
Russia occupies an unusual niche in the global food chain. Before the Russian Revolution and the subsequent forced collectivization of farming under Stalin, it was the largest grain exporting nation in the world.
Today, roughly 7 percent of the planet’s arable land is either owned by the Russian state or by collective farms, but about a sixth of all that agricultural land—some 35 million hectares—lies fallow. [A hectare is about two and a half acres.]
. . . .
Yields in Russia, however, are tiny. The average Russian grain yield is 1.85 tons a hectare—compared with 6.36 tons in the United States and 3.04 in Canada.
However, most of the discussions to privatize appear to entail large-scale, land purchases/grants with government restrictions on the ability to subdivide and sell, inhibiting a viable and fluid, decentralized, real estate market. If so, cronyism and mercantilism would be the likely outcome, with higher prices and major disparities in economic opportunity. And without the benefits from a truly free market in farmlands, political pressures to re-nationalize could result:
[T]he business of buying and reforming collective farms is suddenly and improbably very profitable, attracting hedge fund managers, Russian oligarchs, Swedish portfolio investors and even a descendant of White Russian émigré nobility.
Earlier reformers envisioned the collective farms eventually breaking up into family farms. But the new business model rests on a belief that Russia’s long, painful history of collectivization is destined to end in large corporate farms.
Some trade and agriculture experts say there is still a danger that a country like today’s Russia, which jealously guards its natural resources, could one day renationalize farms or form a cartel that dictates to landowners.
Interestingly enough in 1929, Russia had about 20 million family farms, which were combined by Stalin into 240,000 collective farms. Fortunately, two percent of the land remained in small, private plots, producing as much as 30 percent of farm output for the nation. This lesson will hopefully not be lost in the new movement toward de-collectivization.
And since according to the U.S. General Services Administration, the federal government here directly owns about 30% of the land in the U.S., wouldn’t de-collectivization be advisable for Americans as well? E.C. Pasour, Jr. and Randal Rucker discuss this need for de-socialization in their Independent Institute book, Pork Barrels and Plowshares: The Political Economy of Agriculture.
Tags: Agriculture, Economics, Privatization, Property Rights, Russia 
So the Russians have finally figured out that central planning isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be, eh? Maybe they could chat with the likes of Kennedy, Hillary and the gang of thieves on Capitol Hill about the failures of collectivization before we have the full nationalization of health care and our schools.
America could also go for a healthy dose of privatization in agriculture. Have you walked by the monstrous Agriculture building on the mall? I’m surprised that the city doesn’t sink from the weight of all that marble.
And it scares me to think that the place is chock full of busy bureaucrats (not one farmer in the bunch), all of them dreaming up new regulations to fix their previous screw ups.
It really is time to drain the swamp on the Potomac.
Steve Hogan | Sep 2, 2008 | Reply
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Paige Cook | Nov 12, 2008 | Reply
“Horrendous, catastrophic, ruthless.” That is some unbiased word choice... Then, further on “cronyism and cartel” are used in passing as positive words about capitalism. I think what you need to realize is that communism is about the dissolution of greed and selfishness for the betterment of all. Output is only lower because of such greed. Russia faced famine for many years because their people killed their animals and destroyed their crops instead of letting them be properly consolidated. If it weren’t for capitalism and greed, communism wouldn’t fail.
Zamphor Oplisno | Mar 30, 2011 | Reply
Zamphor, Where have you been the past 100 years? If anything has been shown to be an abject failure it is socialism, especially Soviet-style communism. But it is not just that socialism is incapable of organizing a complex economic system, but that it requires absolutism in power (i.e, totalitarianism). It is no accident that communism produced more than 100 million non-war related deaths by communist regimes in the 20th Century–annihilating vast numbers of people is essential to vainly attempt to impose socialist central planning.
Here are just a few references that utterly refute any notion that communism and socialism is noble, economically viable, or moral:
Socialism: An Economic And Sociological Analysis, by Ludwig von Mises
Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth, by Ludwig von Mises
The Black Book of Communism, by Mark Kramer, Jonathan Murphy, Nicolas Werth and Jean-Louis Panne
David Theroux | Mar 30, 2011 | Reply
I think I’ve already heard all the reasons as to why communism won’t work. For one, there is no motivation because if people aren’t working for a reward or something they truly believe in than why should they try as hard? As a child, my job experience is fairly limited in scope and quantity, but I worked part-time as a busboy for a year or more, and I have subsequently given up all the money I “worked for”. If everyone could only be motivated by self-serving desires than the world would be a sad, sad place. Economically, every instance of communism has collapsed, right? Look at the Soviet Union they fell apart because they were devoting all of their resources to... Oh, wait a second, wasn’t their economic collapse due to an arms race with a capitalist country? Once, again it is the fears and greed of capitalism that result in communism failing miserably. (Marx really messed things up for communism in that regards. Communism does not have to spread in order to be effective, just as capitalism doesn’t. The fact that any system would be better suited to deal with a global society akin to their own goes without saying.) A third large problem is the ego of the man in charge. Stalin and Trotsky more so than Lenin, the head communist leaders have always been very keen to brainwash people. I believe this is a horribly bad idea. My concept is that we should teach children to make their own decisions as opposed to telling them our bias. I always dislike how children are preached to and converted in America, and this was one of the positive changes that was made in the USSR. I agree that communism has been handled poorly, but I cannot state that it is undeniably a bad idea. I find that there are many more deaths attributed to capitalism than you’d like to believe. Poor people dying of starvation is the prime point of capitalism. I think it is inarguable that everyone is equal, so why should one man only get enough food to crawl to the next day while another man gets enough resources to feed a million people?
(P.S. the majority of that 100 I have been dreadfully busy not existing, during the rest, I have been busy thinking.)
Zamphor Opisno | Apr 7, 2011 | Reply
Yeah. So, future me does not think that everything said right here is terribly clever or true. But, nevertheless, I still agree with the sentiment. Also; Links!! to “well accepted literature”. Man, I just love real true arguementalists (gotta like that word). But, anyhow, I’d like to be on the record for saying that while I have done nothing with my money I never got the courage to donate it. Which is very sad! Indeed. Doesn’t mean it can’t be done though.
Zamphor | Mar 1, 2012 | Reply