ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the development of agriculture as affected by reforms in the second half of the 1960s, reforms that shaped the farm industry of the 1970s. The German Democratic Republic government has exempted agriculture from the framework of its economic reform. The Hungarian reform measures were embodied in the New Economic Mechanism, formally instituted in January 1968. The major institutional change was the merger of the ministries of agriculture and food into one unit, demonstrating the interdependence between consumer and producer. The planned technological improvement of agriculture depends upon the availability of skilled labor, and the limited supply inhibits progress toward modernization. Changes in the institutional setting, in administration, in land tenure, and in agricultural technology have brought about parallel changes in the social structure of rural communities in Eastern Europe. The radical conversion of Hungarian agriculture by means of land reform and subsequent collectivization created a disorganized entanglement of the rural population.
