Farming organisation: co-operative and collective farming

Detail

Why NCERT classifies farming by organisation

• Most farming types are grouped by what is grown (crops, livestock) or how intensely land is used (subsistence, plantation, mixed farming).
• NCERT adds one more way to group farming. It looks at organisation:
• who owns the farm (one family, a society, or the whole community or state)

• how state policy runs farming

• This gives two models:

• co-operative farming, which farmers join by choice
• collective farming, which the state sets up and controls

Co-operative farming: meaning

• Co-operative farming: a group of farmers join together by choice and pool their resources in a co-operative society (a jointly owned body run by its members). The aim is to farm more efficiently and earn more.
• Key feature: each farmer keeps their own farm. Only services and resources are shared. Land ownership stays private.
• What the society does for its members:
• Buys inputs (seeds, fertiliser, machines) in bulk, so each farmer pays less.
• Sells produce on the most favourable terms. Small farmers get a better price together than they would get alone.

• Processes produce into quality products (for example milk into butter or cheese) at low cost.

• How it helps, step by step:

• A small farmer alone has little bargaining power.
• Many farmers act together as one large buyer and seller.
• Middlemen are cut out, costs fall and incomes rise.

Co-operative movement: world distribution

• The movement began over a century ago.
• It succeeded in many Western European countries:
• Denmark: the most successful case. Practically every farmer is a member of a co-operative. This is a common "which country" question.

• Netherlands, Belgium, Sweden and Italy also have strong farm co-operatives.

• Why it suited these countries:

• Farms are small to medium in size and farmers can read and write well.
• Dairy and mixed farming need shared processing and marketing, and co-operatives provide this. Danish butter and bacon are classic examples.

Co-operatives in India

• Dairy co-operatives of Gujarat (the Anand pattern):
• The Kaira District Co-operative Milk Producers' Union came before Amul [5]. Amul celebrated its 75th foundation year in 2021 at Anand, Gujarat [6].
• Operation Flood (1970) set up Anand-pattern co-operatives in milk-producing areas across India. These co-operatives collected milk and supplied it to the cities [5].

• The Gujarat Co-operative Milk Marketing Federation (GCMMF), which owns the Amul brand, held its Golden Jubilee in 2024. Figures given then: over 18,000 milk co-operative committees, about 36 lakh farmer families and over 3.5 crore litres of milk processed per day [4].

• Sugar co-operatives of Maharashtra:

• Cane growers jointly own the sugar mills.

• At the national level, the National Federation of Co-operative Sugar Factories Ltd. (NFCSFL) helps convert the molasses-based ethanol plants of co-operative sugar mills [7].

• Ministry of Co-operation:

• A separate ministry was set up on 6 July 2021. Its motto is "Sahkar se Samriddhi" (prosperity through co-operation) [2].
• India has more than 8.44 lakh co-operative societies across 30 sectors, including credit, housing, marketing, dairy and fisheries (PIB, 2024) [3].

Collective farming: meaning

• Collective farming: farming based on social ownership of the means of production and collective labour.
• Means of production means land, livestock, tools and machines. "Social ownership" means the whole community owns them, not one person.

• Collective labour means everyone works together on the common land.

• How it worked:

• Farmers pooled their land, livestock and labour into one large farm.
• Each family kept a very small plot to grow crops 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 the work each member did.

The Soviet kolkhoz

• The kolkhoz (Russian for "collective farm") was introduced in the former Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin.
• Timeline: NCERT dates it to 1928. Forced collectivisation was pushed hardest between 1929 and 1933 [9].
• 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 [9].

• Aims:

• fix the inefficiency of the older, small-scale farming methods
• raise output so that the country could feed itself (self-sufficiency)

• weaken the richer peasants, the kulaks [9]

• Kolkhoz vs sovkhoz:

	Kolkhoz	Sovkhoz
Meaning	Collective farm	State farm
Who runs it	Member families who hold permanent, rent-free rights to state land [8]	The state runs it like a "factory in the fields" [8]
Workers	Members who share the farm's output	State employees paid wages from state funds [8]

Costs and decline of collectivisation (beyond NCERT)

• Famine:
• The state took far too much grain. Its demands were based on inflated "biological yield" estimates.
• Peasants were left without enough food and were not allowed to leave the affected regions.

• The result was the Soviet famine of 1931–34. In Ukraine it is called the Holodomor. The worst-hit areas were Ukraine, Soviet Russia and Kazakhstan [10].

• Peasant resistance: many peasants slaughtered their livestock and refused to join the collectives. The state answered by deporting the kulaks.

• Break-up: after the USSR was dissolved in 1991, kolkhozy and sovkhozy were broken up or reorganised into private companies, co-operatives and family farms.
• Dated in NCERT: the textbook uses the present tense and shows a photo of a collective farm in Kazakhstan (Fig. 4.15 b). This describes the Soviet period, not today.

China: from communes to household farming (beyond NCERT)

• Collectivisation in the mid-1950s: following the Soviet model, China made landowning farm households hand over their land to collectives [12].
• People's communes (1958):
• These were large rural units that ran local government and all economic and social activity [11].
• They had three levels: production team → production brigade → commune [11].

• During the Great Leap Forward (1958–60), private plots were taken into common ownership and wages were made equal [12].

• Household Responsibility System (HRS), from 1978:

• Decollectivisation (breaking up the collectives) was approved in 1978 [12].
• Farm families got usufruct rights over cultivated land. Usufruct means the right to use land and keep what it produces, without owning it [13].
• The communes had proved inefficient and were abolished [13].

Co-operative vs collective: comparison

Feature	Co-operative farming	Collective farming
Joining	Voluntary	State-driven, often forced
Ownership	Private farms are kept	Social ownership of land and tools
Labour	Each family works its own farm	Collective labour on pooled land
Main role	Shared buying, selling and processing	Production to meet state targets
Selling	Best market terms	To the state at fixed prices
Examples	Denmark, Netherlands, Belgium, Sweden, Italy; Amul (Gujarat)	USSR kolkhoz (from 1928); China's communes (1958–78)
Status today	Growing; India has a Ministry of Co-operation (2021)	Mostly broken up (USSR 1991; China from 1978)

Prelims Hooks

• The country where practically every farmer belongs to a co-operative is Denmark (NCERT exercise).
• In co-operative farming, farmers keep their own farms. In collective farming, land is under social ownership.
• Kolkhoz = collective farm. Sovkhoz = state farm whose workers earn wages [8].
• The kolkhoz system began in the USSR under Stalin (1928). It was pushed hardest in 1929–33 [9].
• The Holodomor is the 1931–34 famine in Ukraine. Kazakhstan and Soviet Russia were also badly hit [10].
• China's people's communes began in 1958 with three levels: team, brigade and commune [11]. The Household Responsibility System began in 1978 [13].
• India's Ministry of Co-operation was formed on 6 July 2021. Its motto is "Sahkar se Samriddhi" [2].
• Amul grew out of the Kaira District Co-operative Milk Producers' Union in Anand, Gujarat. Operation Flood started in 1970 [5].
• Trap: NCERT's Fig. 4.15 (b) shows a collective farm in Kazakhstan. Large-scale collective farming ended there after 1991.

Mains Points

• Why co-operatives work for small farmers (GS-I/GS-III): pooling cuts input costs, removes middlemen and adds value through processing. Gujarat dairy is the proof: about 36 lakh families and over 3.5 crore litres of milk a day (2024) [4]. This model suits India, where most holdings are small and marginal.
• Why forced collectivisation failed: it was not voluntary, and farmers had little reason to work harder because extra output did not reward them. State targets ignored real harvests. The result was famine in the USSR (1931–34) [10] and low efficiency in China's communes [13]. China's move to household farming in 1978 showed that giving farmers the reward for their own work raises output.
• Policy response in India: the Ministry of Co-operation (2021) [2] and the spread of societies (more than 8.44 lakh across 30 sectors, 2024) [3] aim to repeat the Anand pattern in fisheries, credit and marketing. Weak governance and political control of sugar co-operatives in Maharashtra are still problems.