CZECHOSLOVAKIAN LAND

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 69, Issue 74, 7 January 1949, Page 3

CZECHOSLOVAKIAN LAND

Outline of Communist Policy

STEPS TOWARDS SOCIALISATION (From Sydney Brookes—Reuter’s Correspondent). (By Airmail) PRAGUE. To achieve socialism in agriculture, Czechoslovakia needs big farm units. To “restrict and push back” capitalist elements in agriculture, Czechoslovakia’s Communist Government must abolish the larger landowners with their more efficient working units.

The Minister of Agriculture, Julius Duris, in a recent lecture to the Socialist Academy in Prague, discussed these complementary but opposing problems. His speech, regarded as one of the most important and illuminating yet given here on this subeet, set out a blue print for socialising the land in Czechoslovakia. It was made while Czechoslovakia was entering the third stage of her land reform by which the maximum permissible size of any holding is to be 50 hectares (125 acres). Mr Duris talced about liquidating “the village-rich,” and redistributing their larger plots of land. At the same time he said that the existence of large numbers of small plots, of land was uneconomic and that tlfey must therefore work to persuade the peasants to combine in larger working units. His programme was: Breakdown the big estates, win the smallholders, combine them in co-operatives —and pave the way for the "development of collectives. “How shall we get a base for another jump toward socialism in the villages?” he asked.*

Individual Holdings Predominate

He compared the extent of socialism in industry with its limited development in agriculture. Ninety-five per cent of all industry in Czechoslovakia was nationalised, he declared. In agriculture 94 per cent of the area being farmed, was held in individual economic units. The socialist sector of agriculture covered only 6 per cent of the farm land. Two per cent of the land was still held by what he .called capitalist units, while small producers held 92 per cent. In more detail, the land was divided as follows: Up to 2 hectares, 620,636 units, equal to 44.3 per cent; 2-10 hectares, 564,029 units, equal to 40.4 per cent; 10-20 hectares, 160,975 units, equal to 11.4 per cent; 20-50 hectares, 40,099 units, equal to 2.9 per cent; 50-plus hectares, 13,957 units, equal to 1.0 per cent; (tempo: - ary). Total 1 1,399,696. Mr Duris added that these roughly 12,400,000 unite, were in turn divided, mainly through the strip-farming system, into 33,000,000 lots, so that each establishment had an average of 23 lots, each, lot averaging only a minute area of land. The “shatering” division made the planning of agricultural production and the national food supplj an immensely difficult task. “The utmost help given to the small and medium farmers cannot remove tne inefficiency of small production, Mi Duris elated. The net value of farm production was 20,000 crowds (£100) per head in 1948, compared with a production value of 70,000 crowds. (£350) per head in industry. Mr Duris here quoted Stalin tor the statement that “a characteristic of small, dispersed agricultural units is that they are not able to make effective use of machines, tractors and the contrivances of agricultural science, and that they can deliver to markets only a small proportion of their produce.” Adding his own comment, Mr Duris continued: Therefore we must accelerate the pace of development in agriculture so that it can keep pace with our industry. In the five-year plan (beginning on January 1, 1949), Mr Duris said, agricultural production must be raised by 37 per cent. Cropping is to be increased by 11 per cent, and livestock production by 8S per cent. Even so, cropping in 1953 will still only exceed- that of before the war by 3.9 per cent., while the comparative' live-stock increase will be 33.1 per cent. The general result of this, Mr Duris said, would be that the proportion of agriculture devoted to crops-would be 52 per cent, compared with the present figure of 65 per cent. Live-stock would cover 48 per cent, instead of 35 per cent.

Co-operation Essential

This was one part of the task, but Mr Duris made it clear that the development required was more than a matter of statistics. He quoted President Element, Gottwald as defining the task in the following terms: “To widen a strong material base in the form of a dense net of State tractor stations and public enterprises for fattening pork and cattle and poultry, to support in the villages all kinds of co-operatives, especially cooperatives for joint production.” Mr Duris said that the People’s Democratic regime made it possible to use the co-operative system to serve the small and medium farmers and make them into a “reliable part of the planned economy.” They wanted a mass membership of small and medium farmers in the co-operatives. All capitalist and reactionary elements must be removed from leading posts. He recognised that the smallholder, as a producer of goods, looked to “free trade and individual enterprise.” At the same time the smallholder had been recently “exploited by the estate owners and the village capitalists.” He looked “for a better economic system” and sought support “from the strength of the working class.” But Lenin had said that “the re-education of the small farmer, the change of his whole psychology, is a matter requiring generations.”

,M). - Duris said that live co-operatives mhst become the chief, and reliable, agents for buying agricultural produce and selling to the farmers their requirements, for persuading the farmers to enter into group contracts for selling products and for producing on a basis of “the \Vhole village.” They must have as their slogan: “The village—one family.” The development of mechanisation was one way in which they could introduce the idea of co-operation.

In 11780, there were 3,700 tractors in Czechoslovakia, and of these, 96 per cent were in the hands of the farmers holding more than 20 hectares (50 acres). They now had 22,000 tractors, of which 66.4 per cent, or 14,300 were controlled and owned by State and co-operative machine stations. In 6000 village districts, they had

machine co-operatives with 155,000 farm members, of whom only 4 percent. owned more than 20 hectares. At the end of the Five Year plan they would have 45,000 tractors, or one tractor to every 125 rec-tares (about 010 acres) of arable land. “We must concentrate on the efficient building up of state machine stations as bases,” he said. The State farms must serve as an example to the small and medium farmers, showing them a practical picture of the advantages of large-scale production. In this way, they would restrict and push back capitalist elements.