Collectivization

Collective farming and communal farming are various types of agricultural production in which multiple farmers run their holdings as a joint enterprise. This type of collective is often an agricultural cooperative in which member-owners engage jointly in farming activities. The process by which farmland is aggregated (or forcefully donated) is called collectivization. In some countries (including the Soviet Union, the Eastern Bloc countries, China, and Vietnam), there have been state-run and cooperative-run variants. For example, the Soviet Union had both kolkhozy (cooperative-run type) and sovkhozy (state-run type), often denoted in English as collective farms and state farms, respectively.

In general, collective farming is contrasted with family farming (in which land ownership and farm management are family-based) and with feudal arrangements in which land was owned by landlords or and peasant farmers were typically impoverished (such as serfdom and slavery). It can be both compared and contrasted with corporate farming; in the post-Soviet states, collective farms have generally been decollectivized either as family farms or as corporate farms, the latter being similar to the old collective farms but with ownership.

Notable examples of collective farming include the kolkhozy that dominated Soviet agriculture between 1930 and 1991 and the Israeli kibbutzim. Both are collective farms based on common ownership of resources and on pooling of labour and income in accordance with the theoretical principles of cooperative organizations. They differ radically, however, in the application of the cooperative principles relative to freedom of choice and democratic rule. The establishment of kolkhozy in the Soviet Union during the country-wide collectivization campaign of 1928–1933 exemplifies forced collectivization, whereas the kibbutzim in Israel traditionally form through voluntary collectivization and govern themselves as democratic entities. The element of forced or state-sponsored collectivization that operated in many countries during the 20th century led to the impression that collective farms always operate under the supervision of the state, but this is not universally true; the common theme was that the administration would be collective, although not necessarily run by government agency staff.

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