The Economic Role of Personal Subsidiary Husbandry

Abstract

Until recently the opinion was widespread in economic practice and the economics literature that the personal subsidiary husbandry of collective farmers, workers and employees retards the development of social production, diverts a substantial part of the labor resources from the social economy, and hinders collective farmers and state farm workers from working productively in collective farms and state farms. The social and personal economies were contraposed as entirely different spheres of application of labor. The existence of personal subsidiary husbandry was explained by the "small proprietor" psychology of the peasants, their insufficient interest in the development of the social economy, and so on. This scornful attitude toward personal subsidiary husbandry and the administrative measures taken to restrict it led to a drop of 4,100,000 in the number of head of cattle in the personal husbandries of collective farmers, workers and employees by January 1, 1965, as compared with 1958, including a drop in the number of cows by 2,400,000; the number of hogs decreased by 670,000, and the number of sheep and goats by 5,800,000. In six years the gross output of personal subsidiary husbandries declined by 88, which could not but affect the rate of growth of agricultural production for the country as a whole. Between 1958 and 1964 the physical volume of sales of agricultural products at the collective farm markets in towns declined by a third, of which: potatoes and poultry - 30%, vegetables - 26%, and animal husbandry products - almost 40%. Sales of beef and milk fell by a factor of 2. And there waa a corresponding considerable rise in prices on these markets. The prices in 1964 were 27% higher on the average than in 1958; the price of potatoes was up a third, of vegetables - 23%, and of animal husbandry products - almost 40%. Beef and milk prices went up almost 36?& and those of poultry rose 1.5 times.