ABSTRACT
But more recent experience shows that the lack of incentives was not the whole explanation. In the last two decades there has been a very substantial increase in agricultural procurement prices and in peasant incomes. Over half of all arable land is now cultivated by state farms, and the collectives now pay a guaranteed minimum ‘wage’ to their members. Yet the practice continues of imposing compulsory delivery quotas and issuing operational orders to the farms. State farm management was and is appointed from above, and collective farms’ management (the chairman and the committee) are still ‘elected’ on the nomination of the party authorities. Indeed, the tendency is to try to incorporate agriculture more closely into the centralised planning system, with much talk of ‘agro-industrial complexes’.
