LANDSCAPE OF CZECHOSLOVAKIA IS CONSTANTLY CHANGING

Wanganui Chronicle, 9 November 1949, Page 7

LANDSCAPE OF CZECHOSLOVAKIA IS CONSTANTLY CHANGING

Peasants Making Progress In The Tilling Of The Soil

(By Sydney Brookes, a Reuter | Correspondent in Prague). A new contour is already visible in ’ the landscape of Bohemia and Mor- I avia as communists carve the farmland into new patterns in a swift pro- j gression towards what they call “more socialist forms.” Where picturesque strips of land, worked over centuries by drudging peasants once climbed the hills and made patchwork round the villages everywhere, wide sweeping furrows, cutting across old boundaries, customs, and traditions, are today literally changing the colour and form of the countryside. The harvest is in. Substantial reserves of grain are held by the State. Communist organisers, the way now clear, are this autumn speediing up the political and economic revolution which is overtaking the peasants. As the soil is being turned over for the autumn sowing, the whole system of the Czechoslovak agricultural economy is being revised, moulded into new methods which the communists say will develop into the model of Soviet Russia. The essential economic fact is that Czechoslovak farm land was formerly split into millions «.f tiny working units. Agricultural economists do not disagree with the communists when they say that this almost feudal system of strip farming, so common in Europe, is wasteful. Machines cannot be used to the best advantage on small strips. Crops must be put in, cultivated, and harvested by hand, the labour needed is enormous and the output comparatively low. The essential political fact is that the communists are using every possible method of persuasion, discrimination, and coercion, to weld these small units into big units. MAKING PROGRESS They are making progress. In the process, some peasants get in the way, but the communist drive for material progress tolerates no opposition from personal prejudice. The most spectacular statistic in the record of the farm revolution is the 461,813 hectares (125,000 acres)) a month since they gained control last year. About one-twelfth of the total area of Czechoslovakia, including farmland, forest and mountains, is therefore nationalised into State farms, most of them working the best available way with the best available technicians and equipment. The area in State farms is roughly one-seventh of the total area of arable land in Czechoslovakia. , In the nationalisation process, the communists took over 120,000 hectares from large estates, 106,000 from smaller estates, 60,000 from the Church, and the balance from miscellaneous sources. Some of it was Ger-man-owned. . Since they started operating under communist direction, the State farms, given special preferences, have increased their total holding of hogs eleven times, their cattle threefold, their sheep fivefold. This major development in the new agriculture came from a farm system in which the Czechoslovak land was worked by 1,400,000 farmer-units whose properties were split and split again into the mediaeval-type strips totalling no fewer than 33,000,000.

The expansion of the state farms continues. With 160,000 head of cattle now, they hope to hold 250,000 next year. Last year, they fed 15,000 pigs. This year, they carried 300,000, Next year they want more than half a million. Side by side with the development of the state farms, the communists are creating agricultural “co-opera-tives.” Figures are not available, but there are almost daily reports of new co-operatives being formed, especially from among the 620,636 farmer-units holding no more than two hectares each. New machine production is going either to state machine stations, or to the communist-run village co-opera-tives, again on the stated principle that discrimination shall be used to forward the communist policy. At the same time larger farmers—about 100,000 are estimated to be in the condemned class of the “villagerich,” holding more than about 15 hectares each —are being forced to deliver proportionately higher totals of their production; to pay more for to buwyi—who 4fi4zloprdE n yaolth seed, fertiliser, fuel and materials; to buy on the expensive free market (since they were deprived of rations); and to pay proportionately higher taxes. Politics and economics are mixed. This season, the strong system of controls operated over all farm production requires farmers io change from bread-grain production to raising cattle and fodder and growing sugar beet. The grain reserves are adequate, more supplies are promised from the Soviet Union, the meat ration is small, sugar is a valuable currency-earning export. ECONOMIC CHANGES These economic changes are given political implications. Sugar beet requires much labour in sowing, cultivation, and harvesting, especially as Czechoslovakia still lacks modern farm machinery. The larger farmers, the “village-rich,” have difficulty in securing allocations of labour. To assist the smaller farmers and especially the state farms and co-operatives, labour is mobilised from towns and factories in the form of "volunteer brigades.” The big plan for developing stockraising involves a big breeding programme. The best stud stock are held by state farms. The best service of artificial insemination for the peasant’s cows comes from the state farms and is given above all to "approved” peasants or organisations. In Prague, the Czechoslovak communist party’s newspaper, "Rude Pravo,” defined the general programme for communism in the villages this season emphasising that special attention was to be paid to fixing quotas of production so that they fell most heavily on the villagerich. "The big farmers must be burdened, especially in the fixing of quotas for meat and milk production, ’ the newspaper declared. As these policies are put into action, Czechoslovakia is beginning to take I on her “new look” in which the paintI er’s quilt of colouring made by the strip farms shades off into buffs and browns and pastels as the peasants land the land itself come under the impact of the new methods.