Le passage à la production industrialisée par la coopération et la situation nouvelle de l'agriculture dans l'économie nationale de la République Démocratique d'Allemagne (RDA)
Authors: Schmidt Walter 
Published: October 2009

The Industrialization, via the cooperative movement, of Farming in the Democratic Republic of Germany - In spite of the decreasing amount of vegetable matter in foodstuffs, vegetable production has to meet increasing demands for it provides the raw material for animal production and for the animal feeding-stuffs industry as well as for the food-stuffs industry.

Industrialized production in agriculture is possible only through a social organization of the production - concentration, specialization, an increasing division of labour between the firms participating in the production of agricultural goods, their processing, stocking and distribution.

Vegetable and animal productions are now links in the chain of cooperation. Vertical cooperation has become the rule in the relations between farming and its suppliers and distributors and between sub-sections and the various levels of farming.

This socialist restructuration has made the industrialization of production both possible and necessary. Farming has overcome the backwardness inherited from the production methods of individual farmers and has become one sector of the national economy with modern means of production, with the modern organization, management and planning required by the application of science and technology to production processes, and above all, with an abundance of workers (labourers and cooperative farmers) who are highly qualified and specialized. Farming, as a sector of the national economy, is divided into two main branches - vegetable production (including market-gardening) and animal production.

Several measures help to preserve and improve the conditions of growth and maturation of the plants, and the fertility of the soil. These long-term measures, characteristic of the development of socialist agriculture, contribute to a lasting improvement in the conditions of farm labour.

However the level of concentration attained in socialist farm businesses does not yet make a rational use of the complex of machine's and technologies possible. At the end of 1973, 6.4 % of the total number of cattle and pigs were reared in industrial farms. Industrial meat production units organize and balance fodder consumption, production costs and daily weight gain. (A State business, the Eberswalde production unit obtains excellent results with a capacity of 100.000 place's for pig-fattening). But the need to make full use of these capacities to increase animal production does not make a rapid adaptation towards this form of specialized business desirable.

The social division of labour leads to a reduction in the amount of social work necessary for food production as a whole and a rapid reduction in the amount of labour used in farming itself, and the relative stagnation of the animal feeding-stuffs and processing industries.

The net cash income of the population has progressed much more quickly than the expenditure on foodstuffs although the latter are of higher quality. The population therefore has more money for other purposes - industrial goods, education, culture and services (but more than half the active workers producing consumer goods are still employed in the farming-feeding-stuffs industry).

We have seen that the relations between the agri-industrial complex, businesses, combinats, unions, with the suppliers, trade and consumers are organized on a vertical cooperation basis. The results obtained make it pos'sible and necessary, in the interests of society, of the firms and the workers, to improve labour conditions, the standard of living (particularly income as compared with the quantity and quality of the labour supplied), the proportion of working- hours/hours of rest, and the possibilities of acquiring higher qualifications linked to the assurance of greater security and improved promotion hopes.

Improved conditions of life and work are an indication of a powerful driving force, capable of developing, reinforcing and stimulating the initiative and the responsibility of the workers with regard to their work.