Poland: Free Farming

From Peking to Prague, Communism’s chronic farm problem regularly produces a bumper crop of discontent. The outstanding exception is Poland, which last year enjoyed the best harvest in its history, doubled a projected 4% increase in gross agricultural production. Compared with 1960, the yield per acre of corn jumped from 204 bushels to 449.

But the reason for Poland’s success provided scant comfort to Communist theoreticians: 87% of the land is owned by individual peasants. State farms occupy only about 12% of the countryside, while collective farmers cultivate about 1%.*

Polish Premier Wladyslaw Gomulka, who abruptly halted a forced march toward collectivization when he rose to power in 1956, now finds it necessary to censure the kolkhozes for lagging behind.

Addressing a national congress of collective farmers in Warsaw, Gomulka complained that, with few exceptions, they “had lower average production yields than the private farms, although the collectives enjoy better conditions,” such as cheap government loans, tax rebates, priority on machinery and fertilizer. The lesson—that free farming works while collectivized agriculture does not—obviously interests Moscow. Khrushchev, while still insisting on collectives, has raised financial incentive for increased output. Eying the Polish reward system, Moscow not long ago confessed: “We share your joy in the achievements of your agriculture. Your policy is producing good results.’

* Elsewhere in Eastern Europe, state and collective farms account for 90%-98% of the arable land.