Agrarian Reform in West Germany: An Assessment of the Integrated Development Project Moorriem

Abstract

A major instrument of agrarian structural reform in the Federal Republic of Germany is the integrated development project, known as the Flurbereinigungsverfahren. The project in Moorriem on the Weser is one of the largest, most expensive and most difficult that has been undertaken. The early plans showed a high degree of land consolidation and numerous farm resettlements as major aims. The agricultural authorities were forced to accept a lower degree of consolidation, because of local resistance and rising costs. With a high degree of mechanization and a vastly improved road network, a high degree of consolidation is also not necessarily important. Fewer farmers were willing to be resettled than was at first anticipated. No comprehensive plan of resettlement has been operated and the authorities have been forced to accept almost every offer to resettle that has been made. In the Marsch almost all the new farms are isolated, whereas in the Moor there are two new group settlements. The latter show definite economic and social advantages over isolated resettlements. Within the village, the development plan has allowed the designation of three areas for residential development and has also brought a new spirit of vitality to Moorriem. A COMMON aim in west European countries is to cut costs in agriculture through the reform of the farming structure. Structural reform is also of great importance as a vehicle of social change in the countryside. This article investigates the process and results of reform measures on the basis of research carried out in one of Germany's most extensive (Io 500 ha) and expensive agricultural development projects in Kreis Wesermarsch.1 In the Federal Republic it is not only in the congested villages and on the fragmented fields of the south-west that serious structural problems exist. In North Germany, too, serious problems occur. Moorriem is located in the far north-western corner of Germany, between the Weser and Oldenburg (Fig. I). It is a linear settlement, which stretches for 15 km along the edge of the peat bog (Moor) and the river clays (Marsch) north of the River Hunte and west of the Weser (Fig. 2). Through the law of Anschuss, the farmers have been able to extend their narrow strips back from the river dikes into the Moor.2 The resulting field pattern is composed of strips 8 km long and declining in width from 40-50 m in the Marsch to i0 m in the Moor, with the farmyard located half-way along the strip on the village street (Fig. 3). Moorriem is a community in which agriculture is still of great importance as an employer (full-time farmers made up 40 per cent of the full sample, farm labourers i per cent). Though the number employed in non-agricultural occupations has risen fast in the last 10 years, almost everyone has at some time worked in agriculture and therefore takes an interest in its progress. The average size of the full-time farm in the sample was 32-8 ha (s = 2. I) and 85 per cent were larger than 20 ha. The land is not highly fragmented; the mean number of separate parcels held by the full-time farmers was 3-8 (s = 2-I) in the sample. These are essentially family farms with no outside labour, specializing in dairying or the fattening of bullocks.