Collective farming

Also called: Kolkhoz · Topic: Primary Activities: Gathering, Pastoralism, Agriculture and Mining · NCERT: Class 12, Ch 4 "Primary Activities"

Meaning

Collective farming is farming in which the land, animals, tools and machines (the means of production) are owned by the whole community, not by single farmers, and everyone works together on the shared land (collective labour). It was introduced in the former Soviet Union as the kolkhoz under Joseph Stalin. NCERT dates it to 1928.

It matters because it is NCERT's clearest example of farming grouped by who owns the farm and how the state controls it, rather than by what is grown. Its failure, and the later break-up of collectives in the USSR and China, explains why farmers produce more when they keep the reward for their own work.

Explanation

How it worked (cause → process → result)

• Cause: the state wanted more food and more control.
• Old farming was done on small plots, and the state saw it as inefficient.
• The state wanted to raise output so the country could feed itself (self-sufficiency).

• It also wanted to weaken the richer peasants, called the kulaks [5].

• Process: land and labour were pooled.

• Farmers pooled their land, livestock and labour into one large farm.
• Each family kept only a very small plot to grow food for its own daily needs.
• The government set yearly targets. The collective sold its produce to the state at fixed prices.

• Any extra produce was shared among members. Pay depended on how much work each member did.

• Result: one big farm run to meet state targets. Farmers worked for the collective, not for their own farm.

Key terms explained

• Means of production: land, livestock, tools and machines.
• Social ownership: the whole community owns these things, not one person.
• Collective labour: everyone works together on the common land.
• Kolkhoz: Russian for "collective farm".

Kolkhoz and sovkhoz: the two Soviet farm types

	Kolkhoz	Sovkhoz
Meaning	Collective farm	State farm
Who runs it	Member families who hold permanent, rent-free rights to state land [4]	The state runs it like a "factory in the fields" [4]
Workers	Members who share the farm's output	State employees paid wages from state funds [4]

Speed, costs and decline

• Forced pace: collectivisation was pushed hardest between 1929 and 1933 [5].
• The Five-Year Plan approved in April–May 1929 aimed to bring 5 million peasant households into collectives by 1932–33.

• That target was doubled by November 1929 and doubled again in December [5].

• Famine:

• The state took far too much grain. Its demands were based on inflated "biological yield" estimates (guesses of the harvest that were higher than the real crop).
• Peasants were left without enough food and were not allowed to leave the affected regions.

• The result was the Soviet famine of 1931–34, called the Holodomor in Ukraine [6].

• Resistance: many peasants killed their own livestock and refused to join. The state answered by deporting the kulaks.

• Break-up: after the USSR was dissolved in 1991, kolkhozy and sovkhozy were broken up or turned into private companies, co-operatives and family farms.

Where it occurs

• Former Soviet Union: the kolkhoz system started here under Stalin (from 1928). The worst-hit famine areas were Ukraine, Soviet Russia and Kazakhstan [6].
• Kazakhstan: NCERT's Fig. 4.15 (b) shows a collective farm here. The textbook uses the present tense, but the photo shows the Soviet period. Large-scale collective farming ended after 1991.
• China:
• In the mid-1950s, China followed the Soviet model. Farm households had to hand over their land to collectives [8].
• People's communes (1958): large rural units that ran local government and all economic and social activity [7]. They had three levels: production team → production brigade → commune [7].
• During the Great Leap Forward (1958–60), private plots were taken into common ownership and wages were made equal [8].

• From 1978, the Household Responsibility System (HRS) brought decollectivisation (breaking up the collectives) [8]. Farm families got usufruct rights (the right to use land and keep what it produces, without owning it), and the communes were abolished [9].

• India: collective farming was never the model. India follows co-operative farming instead (for example Amul in Gujarat).

Don't confuse with

• Co-operative farming: farmers join by choice and keep their own farms. Only buying, selling and processing are shared (for example Denmark, or Amul in Gujarat). Collective farming is state-driven, often forced, and the land is under social ownership.
• Sovkhoz (state farm): the state owns and runs it, and workers are employees paid wages [4]. In a kolkhoz, member families share the farm's output.
• Household Responsibility System (China, 1978): this is the opposite of collective farming. It gave land-use rights back to individual farm families [9].
• Plantation agriculture: this is grouped by crop and scale (one cash crop on a large estate). Collective farming is grouped by ownership and organisation.

Prelims Hooks

• Kolkhoz = collective farm. Sovkhoz = state farm whose workers earn wages [4].
• The kolkhoz system began in the USSR under Stalin (1928). It was pushed hardest in 1929–33 [5].
• In collective farming, each family kept only a small private plot for daily needs. The rest of the produce was sold to the state at fixed prices.
• The Holodomor is the 1931–34 famine in Ukraine. Kazakhstan and Soviet Russia were also badly hit [6].
• China's people's communes began in 1958 with three levels: team, brigade and commune [7]. The Household Responsibility System began in 1978 [9].
• Trap: NCERT's Fig. 4.15 (b) shows a collective farm in Kazakhstan. Large-scale collective farming ended there after 1991. Also, "voluntary joining" and "private ownership of farms" describe co-operative, not collective, farming.

Mains Points

• Why forced collectivisation failed (GS-I):
• Farmers were forced to join, so it was not voluntary.
• Extra effort did not bring farmers extra reward, so they had little reason to work harder.

• State targets ignored the real harvest. This led to famine in the USSR (1931–34) [6] and low efficiency in China's communes [9].

• Lesson from decollectivisation: the USSR broke up its collectives after 1991, and China moved to household farming from 1978 [8] [9]. Both show that farmers produce more when they keep the reward for their own work. This explains why the world moved away from collective farming.

• Relevance for India (GS-I/GS-III): India's farm holdings are mostly small and marginal. India chose voluntary co-operatives instead of collectives, and farmers keep their land. The Anand pattern in Gujarat dairy reaches about 36 lakh farmer families [3]. The Ministry of Co-operation was set up on 6 July 2021 to spread this model [2].

Related concepts

• Co-operative farming

Read more

• Farming organisation: co-operative and collective farming