Personal Subsidiary Husbandry

M. Makeenko, Economic Role of Personal Subsidiary Husbandry. October 1966

Original Source: Voprosy ekonomiki, No. 10 (1966).

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 counterposed 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 8%, 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 was 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.

Thus, the unsubstantiated restriction of personal subsidiary husbandry led in a short time to a decline in the supply of commodities on the collective farm markets and to a rise in prices for farm produce, with the result that the losers were the millions of workers and employees living in small towns, where state trade far from fully meets the requirements of the population. The toilers in the countryside were also losers, since the reduced receipt of farm produce from personal subsidiary husbandry was not compensated by the increase in remuneration for work done in the social economy. In the RSFSR, for example, the quantity of produce obtained by a collective farm family from the social economy and personal subsidiary husbandry went down on the average as follows: potatoes - 390 kg., vegetables and melons - 148 kg., and milk - 169 kg. At the same time, owing to the mass-scale killing of livestock, the receipt of meat and fats from the subsidiary husbandry went up somewhat (by 22 kg., on the average, per family in the RSFSR in 1963 as compared with 1958).

The mistakes made with respect to the personal subsidiary husbandry of collective farmers, workers and employees are now being corrected. As a result of the lifting of the unsubstantiated restrictions, the organization of the sale of concentrated feed, the issuing of a larger quantity of fodder as remuneration for labor, the granting of credit and other measures, the number of head of cattle in personal husbandry increased in 1965 alone by 2,800,000, of which close to 500,000 were cows; the number of hogs went up by 3,700,000, and sheep and goats increased by 1,700,000. As a consequence, in the summer of 1966 the market prices were down 6% on the average as compared with 1964, and the prices of potatoes, lard, meat and eggs - 11 to 32%. At many markets they are now either lower than state retail prices or the same. All of which shows that at the present level of development of agricultural production, personal subsidiary husbandry is vitally necessary and economically justified. Its analysis is an inseparable part of the problem of expanded socialist reproduction.

What are the objective causes for the existence of personal subsidiary husbandry under socialism, and what determines its place and role in expanded socialist reproduction? To this day, unfortunately, a clear answer to these questions cannot be found in our economics literature. What is more, the highly contradictory and one-sided judgments of individual economists are of little help in clearing up these questions. Thus, A. Malafeev links the existence of personal subsidiary husbandry with the existence in our country of market trade, holding that the high market prices artificially boost the profitability of personal subsidiary husbandry and serve almost as the main reason for its vitality.

If one were to agree with this view, then the conclusion would inevitably follow that the vitality of personal subsidiary husbandry is conditioned by the market, and the ratio of its commodity output to total output serves as its measure. Indeed, it logically follows that working people who carry on personal husbandry are interested not so much in producing farm produce (consumer values) as in selling it. This "market" theory of the essence of personal subsidiary husbandry has, in our opinion, no foundation whatever. We know that in roughly 75% of the towns on which the Central Statistical Administration of the USSR bases its computations, market prices for animal husbandry products are lower than in the state trade network, and yet the trend toward an increase in the number of livestock in personal husbandry is indisputable. According to sample data, a collective farm family in the RSFSR consumes and otherwise uses for its own needs on the average more than 70% of the milk, two-thirds of the meat and fats, and about 90070 of the potatoes (including the portion used as feed for its animals) obtained from its personal husbandry. Hence, marketing cannot serve as the main reason for the existence of personal subsidiary husbandry. Labor in personal subsidiary husbandry is in the main the labor of a producer and not the labor of a producer of commodities.

Evidently this is the basis on which some economists have suggested that personal subsidiary husbandry primarily has a consumer character. "By consuming the produce gathered from their personal plots," writes V. G. Venzher, "workers, employees and collective farmers spare themselves the need of buying it and spending some of their pay or earnings received for their participation in the social labor on the collective farm," and he notes that 'the sale of some of the produce from their personal subsidiary husbandries does not alter their consumer nature."

We hold that the statement that personal subsidiary husbandry is of a consumer nature does not yet reveal its essence. The point is not that personal subsidiary husbandry "spares" the person the need to spend some of his earnings to buy foodstuffs: although the personal subsidiary husbandry of collective farmers, workers and employees is in the main of a consumer nature, it performs a diverse role. For workers and employees the personal husbandry is primarily a supplementary source of the consumption fund. Before the introduction of guaranteed remuneration at rates corresponding to those prevailing at state farms, the personal subsidiary husbandry served for collective farmers in many parts of the country as an important source for the reproduction of labor power since the income from the social economy by no means covers the socially necessary costs of its reproduction in every region.

Consequently, the scale of earnings of particular categories of workers makes necessary an additional source of means of existence for normal reproduction of labor power. The problem of being "spared" the need to spend a portion of earnings to buy foodstuffs does not exist for those categories of workers, as their earnings are not enough to cover the socially necessary costs of reproduction of labor power. Only the earnings (in kind and cash) and the receipts from the personal subsidiary husbandry together make it possible to cover the expenditures on the reproduction of labor power. For the other category of workers, personal subsidiary husbandry is an additional source for obtaining produce for personal consumption (directly in the form of the produce received or through exchange on the market for manufactured articles).

An analysis of factual material characterizing the nature of personal subsidiary husbandry shows that it is not relations of distribution but production itself that makes its existence under socialism objectively necessary. Moreover, it can be clearly observed that the personal subsidiary husbandry performs specific functions for different categories of workers. For working people whose level of remuneration is low(unskilled workers, people engaged in non-mechanized work on the overwhelming majority of farms, and so on) it does not serve as an additional source of income; it is rather an indispensable condition for normal reproduction of labor power, inasmuch as the level of pay of this category is below the socially necessary level in a number of cases, and hence the receipt of produce from personal subsidiary husbandry is a part of the necessary product - of the fund of vital means needed to maintain and reproduce labor power. For workers whose pay is on a socially normal level, that is, for the numerically predominant category of workers, personal subsidiary husbandry serves as an additional source of income, enabling them to satisfy their requirements more fully. In other words, in this case the personal subsidiary husbandry performs a qualitatively different function: it is a source of income over and above the magnitude of the necessary product that has developed objectively.

As the income from the social economy keeps increasing, and such a trend is entirely law-governed, collective farmers as collective owners of the production assets of their farm will also get a part of the net income in proportion to their participation in social production, which is already the case today in a number of farms with a high level of profitability. Moreover, as experience indicates, personal husbandry is not disappearing. Only its function is changing: from an indispensable factor in ensuring normal reproduction of labor power, it is becoming a truly supplementary source of income.

The introduction of guaranteed remuneration in collective farms is a powerful accelerator of this process, an accelerator that objectively reflects the rising material well-being of the working people in the countryside; and it is a new and important step toward the approximation of the standard of living of town and countryside. Today, however, personal subsidiary husbandry largely performs the first type of function - it serves as an indispensable condition for the reproduction of labor power in the countryside. Even in 1965 the social economy had roughly one cow and one and a half hogs per collective farm household. Therefore, if the collective farmers had no livestock in their personal subsidiary husbandry, they would not have been able to provide their families with animal husbandry products even if the collective farm were run on a natural basis. This precisely is the economic foundation of personal subsidiary husbandry and this explains its viability and the role it plays in social production.

Thus, we may conclude that personal subsidiary husbandry performs a quite definite role in social production under socialism: first, it is one of the sources of the necessary consumption fund for a certain category of collective farmers, workers and employees, ensuring them a subsistence minimum; in other words, it is one of the components of the normal reproduction of labor power; second, it serves as an additional source of the formation of the consumption fund of the direct producers, of the rising well-being of the toilers in the countryside; third, it is an additional source of commodities (the collective farm market) for supplying the working people, and not only the urban population but also the rural intelligentsia that have no subsidiary husbandry of their own.

The following data obtained from sample surveys provide a definite idea of the role of personal husbandry for a collective farm family. Of the total amount of farm produce received by a family in the RSFSR, the proportion coming from personal husbandry is: cereals - about 7%, potatoes - about 90%, vegetables and melons - 80%; milk, meat and eggs - almost 100%, hay - about 52%, and other coarse feed - roughly 3%. Thus, personal subsidiary husbandry is the collective farm family's principal source of such vitally necessary foodstuffs as animal husbandry products, potatoes, and vegetables. As regards meeting the requirements of a collective farm family in cereals and fodder grain, and also in coarse feed for livestock, the social economy plays the main role. The social economy is also the principal source of cash income, which the collective farm family uses to buy industrial and non-industrial goods, to pay for services, and so on.

Consequently, personal subsidiary husbandry performs a quite definite function in the reproduction of labor power, meeting the requirements of the collective farm family in animal husbandry products, potatoes, and vegetables. This special purpose determines its structure and its contribution to the total volume at agricultural production. The personal subsidiary husbandry of collective farmers, workers and employees accounts for about 3% of the total land under cultivation in the country. It accounts for less than 1% of the sowings of cereal crops, 0.7% of the fodder crops, 0.01% of the industrial crops, but 45.3% of the area sown to potatoes and vegetables.

Of the total volume of the country's agricultural production, the personal subsidiary husbandry of collective farmers, workers and employees accounts today for approximately 17%, with field crops making up roughly 6% and animal husbandry products more than 30%. The personal husbandries produce 60% of the total potato crop, some 40% of the vegetables, more than 40% of the meat (dressed weight), about 39% of the milk, and almost 68% of the eggs. These output volumes make it possible to meet the vital requirements of the rural toilers and in addition provide larger supplies for the market, serving as an additional source for meeting the urban population's demand for animal husbandry products, potatoes, vegetables, and fruit.

That is why the unjustified restrictions in effect until recently on personal subsidiary husbandry (reduction of the quantities of fodder for personal livestock issued as remuneration for labor, cutting down the size of household plots, prohibiting the sale of farm produce at railroad stations, the administrative regulation of prices at collective farm markets in towns, and so on) caused considerable damage not only to the well-being of the rural population, but also to the country's economy as a whole by artificially limiting market supplies, which are one of the important sources for satisfying the material requirements of the working people.

We must not fail to mention that personal subsidiary husbandry was and continues to be of great importance for bringing the standards of living of the urban and rural populations closer together. As a matter of fact, until the guaranteed remuneration for their labor was introduced, collective farmers' earnings were approximately 2 times below the average monthly pay of workers in industry and 1.5 times below the earnings of workers and employees of state farms. However, despite their lower average monthly earnings, state farm workers and collective farmers consume considerably more flour and bread, potatoes, melons, fats, milk and eggs than workers in industry, thanks to the produce they receive from their personal subsidiary husbandry. And this equalizes to a certain extent the total calorie intake. If, therefore, we take the whole set of principal food products, the gap in the levels of consumption by the families of state farm workers, collective farmers and workers in industry will be much less than the difference in the remuneration of their labor, and this means that personal subsidiary husbandry has an important part to play in evening out the real incomes of the population. Thus, personal subsidiary husbandry, particularly as regards the collective farm sector of the economy, is an important factor in raising the working people's average income and in enhancing their well-being. To a certain extent it increases the rural toilers' interest in developing agricultural production and counteracts the flow of population (primarily of families) to towns. It promotes the creation of permanent cadres of personnel for the country's agriculture.

All this confirms the fact that personal subsidiary husbandry is still of great importance at the present stage of development. This is also supported by data on the income structure of a collective farm family. According to data obtained from sample investigations of money incomes of collective farm families, receipts from the social economy account for roughly 50%, remuneration for work in state and cooperative organizations - 12.5%, and money obtained from the sale of farm produce from the subsidiary husbandry - approximately 28%. However, these figures give an idea only of the cash income; but the bulk of the output of the subsidiary husbandry is consumed directly by the family, since only the surplus is sold as a rule.

The fact that collective farmers have a personal subsidiary husbandry is an important factor in increasing the produce from the social economy that is available for the market, inasmuch as it makes it largely unnecessary to supply the direct producers with many kinds of food products. As has been stated earlier, if there were no personal subsidiary husbandry, the problem of ensuring the normal reproduction of labor power in collective farms would have made it necessary to operate the social animal husbandry as a natural economy.

In expanded socialist reproduction, therefore, personal subsidiary husbandry has a highly distinctive function: it makes it possible to relieve the social economy of the need to produce the whole consumption fund of collective farmers, facilitates the growth of the accumulation fund through the development of social production, and hence accelerates the rate of expanded socialist reproduction. As the social economy is strengthened and developed, there will be a natural decline in the proportion contributed by subsidiary husbandry to the total consumption fund of collective farmers, but no reduction in the absolute volume of production in the personal husbandry. Correspondingly, in the future the income from subsidiary husbandry will decline relatively as the income from the social economy increases absolutely. Otherwise (in the event that the personal consumption fund increases through the growth of production in the social economy while the volume of farm products received from the subsidiary husbandry declines) the rise of real income can slow down. Practically, this could mean merely the shifting of the center of gravity of the reproduction of labor power onto the social economy.

The level of development of the social economy does not allow us to raise the question of totally curtailing the personal subsidiary husbandry in the immediate future, as the rate of growth of agricultural production planned for the social sector for the current five-year period would be altogether insufficient for this. In order to maintain unchanged the present level of collective farmers' real income, with the ratio of commodity output to total output remaining stable, it would be necessary to at least double the volume of output of the collective farms' social economy. That is precisely why there is no need to counterpose the two different sources of income, which only in harmonious development can ensure fulfillment of the important socioeconomic task set in the directives of the 23rd Party Congress, namely, to approximate the standards of living of the rural and urban populations while achieving a general rise in the well-being of the whole Soviet people. "The personal subsidiary husbandry," it was emphasized at the 23rd Congress of the Party, "should also be one of the sources of income of the rural population." It goes without saying that in the more remote future, when the social economy reaches a level at which the people working in the countryside can be ensured not only high real incomes but also enough agricultural products, the personal subsidiary husbandry will disappear. Under those conditions it will be economically inadvisable to engage in personal subsidiary husbandry, which requires a considerable expenditure of labor because of low productivity.

For the time being, however, personal subsidiary husbandry is of great importance for ensuring the necessary conditions for normal reproduction of labor power in agriculture, and it is from this standpoint only that the prospects of its preservation and development should be appraised. Unfortunately, the notion that personal husbandry is some sort of foreign element in the socialist economy continues to make itself felt quite often. In particular, this is reflected in the fact that most collective farms still fail to plan for the production of fodder to provide for livestock owned by the collective farm households. Some economists regard labor in personal subsidiary husbandry not as socially necessary for the normal reproduction of labor power, but as money-grubbing engendered by the "dark forces" of peasant psychology.

Quite often it is asserted that the extent of development of collective farmers' personal subsidiary husbandry is directly dependent on the income they get from the social economy: the higher the remuneration of labor, the less labor the collective farmer puts into his personal husbandry, and vice versa.

But this assertion fails to take into account that even in areas where the remuneration is high the social economy cannot fully satisfy the collective farm family's requirements with respect to the entire assortment of necessary farm produce (primarily the products of animal husbandry), and that it is the personal subsidiary husbandry which satisfies the remaining needs. Hence, the amount of labor put into personal subsidiary husbandry depends mainly not on the level of remuneration in the social economy, but on the density of animal husbandry per collective farm household and the extent of remuneration for labor in kind.

At times it is still repeated, by inertia, that personal subsidiary husbandry reduces the collective farmers' labor effort in social production. As a rule, such statements are a priori or are based on casual data that are unsupported by massive statistical materials. Meanwhile, an analysis of statistical data not only disproves the thesis that work in personal husbandry causes a decline in the labor effort of collective farmers, but also shows that in a number of regions the personal husbandry, provided of course it has not become excessive in size, is one of the factors in increasing the labor effort by collective farmers in the social economy.

This conclusion may appear paradoxical if one passes over the question of the sources of labor power engaged in personal subsidiary husbandry. Analysis has shown that the necessary production processes in these husbandries are carried out to a considerable extent by persons of pension age and juveniles. In the total balance 'of labor outlays, it is only with women that labor in the personal husbandry accounts for a considerable share of their total working time. While with men in the RSFSR of working age(16 to 59), personal husbandry labor amounts to 9%, on the average, of their total working time (from 6% in the Moscow and Kirov regions to 15% in the Orel Region), with women (16 to 54) the figure is more than a third (from 20% in the Moscow Region to 45% in the Tambov Region). This means that the bulk of the labor outlays in the personal subsidiary husbandry of the collective farm household is accounted for by female labor.

Because of the specific structure of labor, the personal subsidiary husbandry is a supplementary. sphere of the population's employment, but it is in no way antithetic to the social economy, as it appears to some. Due to a number of circumstances - the lack in some collective farms of regularly functioning preschool institutions, bakeries, laundries, public eating places, and so on - the sphere in which women can apply their labor in the social economy is relatively limited, inasmuch as housework, the rearing of children, etc., take up a lot of time. Care of the livestock belonging to the collective farm household does not require uniform attention throughout the day, and therefore housework can be easily combined with work in the subsidiary husbandry.

At the present level of development of the productive forces in a number of areas (the so-called surplus labor areas), the social economy does not as yet make it possible to ensure full employment for the entire able-bodied population, and personal subsidiary husbandry serves as a supplementary sphere of application of labor. Moreover, it must be borne in mind that the level of intensification of the social economy still precludes the possibility of full year-round employment of the rural population. In the personal subsidiary husbandry, however, the bulk of the labor outlays go into animal husbandry, that is, the branch in which the labor outlays are stable.

All this confirms that the labor put into personal subsidiary husbandry is socially useful since, first, it is objectively necessary for the normal reproduction of labor power in agriculture; second, it furnishes additional supplies for the market to meet the requirements of the urban population in particular farm products; and, third, it is a sphere for the supplementary employment of the able-bodied population.

Recognition that labor in personal subsidiary husbandry is socially necessary, useful, and significant raises several questions.

1. We often employ the concept of "persons not involved in social production," implying people engaged in housekeeping and working in personal subsidiary husbandry, but we forget that at the present level of development of the productive forces this labor is socially useful labor, which still plays an important part in the normal reproduction of labor power. It is, of course, possible to draw an idyllic picture of the future, when only roses and dahlias will grow on the household plot, but we must not ignore the fact that today personal subsidiary husbandry - which is an organic part of the socialist economy - performs important social functions that determine its place and importance in expanded socialist reproduction. And it is exactly this which should determine the attitude of both theory and practice toward personal subsidiary husbandry.

2. It is common knowledge that the labor of women in agriculture is covered by special regulations: while the participation in social production of members of families of workers and employees is a personal matter (that is, the wife of an industrial worker, of an employee, or of a state farm worker may confine herself to housekeeping or take a job, at her own discretion), for able-bodied collective farm women a minimum number of man-days of work in the social economy is fixed by decision of the general meeting of the collective farm. It seems to me that this practice has outlived its usefulness. At a time when material interest in the development of the social economy had been undermined, the fixing of a compulsory minimum of work in the social economy was a means of ensuring labor power for collective farm production. But now that remuneration for a man-day of work to becoming more and more appreciable and we have introduced guaranteed remuneration, there is no basis for such regulation. It must not be forgotten that even earlier the personal subsidiary husbandry was not the main sphere of application of labor. Today there is every reason to shift from administrative measures to economic measures for stimulating collective farmers to take part in the social economy. But even under these conditions the personal subsidiary husbandry will remain a supplementary sphere of application of labor. This question deserves to be given special attention right now in connection with the preparation of the draft of a new charter for the agricultural artel.

3. It has been the practice of the Central Statistical Administration of the USSR to count as a full-time annual worker a collective farmer who has put in 280 man-days in the social economy - 290man-days by able-bodied men and 270 by able-bodied women. We believe that on the whole this standard is exaggerated: even in industry, where in the main there is no seasonal production, workers actually put in an average of 266.5 days of work a year. In the present instance the question involves something else. If we recognize that labor in personal subsidiary husbandry is socially useful, that it is necessary inasmuch as at the present stage it performs a social function, being one of the factors in the normal reproduction of labor power, then it is evident that the time expended on work in personal subsidiary husbandry should be taken into account in planning calculations of the level of employment in agriculture. And it is also necessary to take into consideration the proportion of the given type of labor expended by particular groups of able-bodied people (men and women). If this is concurred in, then the average number of man-days worked per year by able-bodied collective farm women should be at least 30% less than that of able-bodied collective farm men (as has been stated earlier, the proportion of outlays of labor in the household plots accounted for by men comes to 9%, and by women - 35%). If we accept 260 man-days as the normal expenditure of labor a year on the average by an able-bodied man (and taking into account the time put in on the personal husbandry, such a "ceiling" does not seem excessively low), then at the present level of development of the social and personal economies, the optimum expenditure of labor by collective farm women in the social economy, assuming normal intensity, will be about 185 man-days, and not 270. Ignoring the fact that personal subsidiary husbandry is inevitable at the present stage, the statistical agencies unfortunately forget that it is necessary to take into account the total outlays of labor in both the social and personal economies.

4. Recognition of the social importance of the labor performed in personal subsidiary husbandry and consideration of the fact that the work done in it is predominantly by women dictate that serious attention be given to the problem of the small-scale mechanization of labor, to developing instruments of labor that take into account the physiological features and capabilities of the female organism. We can no longer put up with our industry's complete failure to take these features into account: shovels, rakes, pitchforks, and other hand tools are produced in accordance with virtually uniform technical specifications and are not designed for women's hands. The easing of labor in personal subsidiary husbandry in every possible way is an important task, and its solution will also have a beneficial effect on labor productivity in the social economy. We cannot ignore the interests of the nearly 16 million women who carry the main burden of non-mechanized work in the social economy and labor in personal subsidiary husbandry.

5. Successful combination of the social and personal economies, which is objectively dictated by the present level of development of the productive forces, demands that the needs of personal subsidiary husbandry be fully taken into account in planning social production: in drawing up the plans for fodder production it is also necessary to take into account the requirements of the livestock belonging to the collective farmers. A system should be set up under which payment in kind for each ruble earned in the social economy must include grain forage and coarse and succulent feed. Social concern for the personal subsidiary husbandry is an important stimulus for enhancing the labor effort of the collective farmers, and that must not be ignored. It is now necessary, along with designing cultural and everyday- service complexes, to work out different versions of residential buildings, based on local conditions in the different areas, for the planned construction of rural settlements. These projects should combine all the advantages of urban housing sewerage, water supply, heat, gas, and so on - with account of the specific living conditions of rural toilers: the need for farm buildings, basements, and premises for the personally owned livestock.

6. The state has allotted to collective farmers, workers and employees the most valuable means of production - land - for conducting personal subsidiary husbandry, and society is by no means unaffected by how the land is used and how much it yields. With the exception of individual cases where the size of the household plot exceeds the norm (and it should be recognized that since there are 15,400,000 collective farm households, they are indeed individual cases), the size of the personal subsidiary husbandry fixed by the Charter of the Agricultural Artel makes it possible to give full time to the work in the social economy and at the same time to make effective use of the labor put into the personal husbandry. A contradiction between the personal and social economies arises only when the number of head of livestock owned personally and the size of the household plot are increased in excess of the norms, and such tendencies must be resolutely combated.

We believe that with the introduction of guaranteed remuneration of labor in collective farms at the same rates as paid in state farms, the importance of personal subsidiary husbandry will not diminish, that only its function will change: from an indispensable condition of normal reproduction of labor power in agriculture it will become a supplementary source of income for the rural population, a source for raising the real standard of living of the toilers in the countryside. And it will still have to play its part in solving the cardinal problem of bringing the living standards of the rural and urban populations closer together.

While the leading role in this process of eliminating differences in cultural and everyday life between town and countryside will be played by the social consumption funds, the personal subsidiary husbandry has its part to play, namely, to become a supplementary factor helping to approximate the level of personal consumption of the rural and urban populations. As we know, in the current five-year period it is planned to increase the pay of workers and employees by at least 20% on the average, and collective farmers I cash income and income in kind from the social economy - by 35 to 40% on the average. As a result, the level of remuneration of collective farmers will come closer to the pay of workers and employees. But if we disregard the personal subsidiary husbandry, the envisaged rate of growth of collective farmers' income from the social economy will not permit us to raise the remuneration of collective farmers in 1970 to the level of pay of workers and employees in 1965. It is another matter If we take into account the possibilities offered by personal subsidiary husbandry as a factor for increasing the real incomes of the rural toilers.

On the basis of the norms for livestock and the size of the household plot, we can compute roughly the collective farm household's income from the personal husbandry: milk - 1, 700 to 2,000 or more liters a year; pork (I or 2 pigs) - 100 to 170 kg.; eggs - 900 to 1,000; beef (I heifer) - 70 to 90 kg.; mutton (2 sheep) - 45 to 50 kg.; potatoes - 30 to 40 centners; vegetables - 2 to 3 centners. At 1964 retail prices this comes to a total income of about 1,300 rubles per collective farm household, or better than 100 rubles a month. Thus, given optimum development in the current five-year period, it will be possible to equalize the levels of real income of collective farmers, workers and employees. It seems to me that these very rough calculations make it possible to answer the question as to why, even with relatively high remuneration, collective farmers are interested in personal subsidiary husbandry.

But let us go back to the calculations cited above. If we examine the actual receipt of farm produce from the personal husbandry, we find that it is considerably less than the potential yield: in the case of potatoes - approximately 1.5 to 2 times less, milk - 1.4 to 1.6 times less, and meat of all kinds - 40 to 70% less. This shows that personal subsidiary husbandry has by no means exhausted its possibilities. An increase in the output of farm produce in personal subsidiary husbandry, besides becoming an additional source for a rise in collective farmers' real income, can also become a factor for creating additional supplies for the market to meet the requirements of the urban population in particular food products. And, of course, the sale of surplus produce should be facilitated, especially in remote areas, so that collective farmers can be spared the need to lose time selling it on the market. That can be done by the consumer cooperative system, which has a highly ramified trade network.

These are but a few of the problems concerning personal subsidiary husbandry that still await detailed study.

Source: Murray Yanowitch, ed., Contemporary Soviet Economics; a collection of readings from Soviet sources (White Plains: International Arts and Sciences Press, 1969), Vol. II, pp. 58-67.