CHANGES IN FORMS OF LAND OWNERSHIP IN SOCIALIST COUNTRIES, WITH A SPECIAL CONCERN TO HORTICULTURE

Last year almost all Eastern European countries experienced political changes.
Economic reforms will very probably follow political reforms, as it happened in Hungary, one of the first reform countries.
In Hungary some parties, such as the Independent Peasant Party, being in the government coalition, want to have a new land reform and to abolish collective farming.
According to investigations and surveys, it seems there is no need for a central reallotment of agricultural land.
Needed, however, is a new land and cooperative legislation.
Laws have to come into force providing the options of a free land market, land pricing, titles to the land of members of agricultural cooperatives, including the right of withdrawing land when members leave them.
It has to be left to the people themselves whether they want to be cooperative members or to farm individually as part-time or fulltime farmers on more or less land.
Central reinstating the small farming system would be very expensive and could be as harmful, if not more, as the collectivization had been.

Horticultural Economics and Marketing, XXIII IHC

A. Burger

https://doi.org/10.17660/ActaHortic.1991.295.1