This article describes the development of agriculture in East Germany, both the Soviet occupation zone of Germany as well as the German Democratic Republic (GDR) between the years 1945 and 1990.
The agricultural policy in the GDR occurred in three phases. The first of which was the so-called Bo...
Agriculture in East
Germany
This article describes the development of agriculture in East Germany, both the
Soviet occupation zone of Germany as well as the German Democratic Republic
(GDR) between the years 1945 and 1990.
, The agricultural policy in the GDR occurred in three phases. The first of which was
the so-called Bodenreform ("land reform"), where around 40% of the land used for
cultivation was expropriated and redistributed without compensation. In 1952 the
second phase of collectivization coincided with the abolition of privately owned and
run farms. As early as the 1960s the third phase of specialization and
industrialization began, in which the GDR leadership tried unsuccessfully to
demonstrate the superiority of socialism through forced collectivization and economic
structures which originated in opposition of the so-called capitalist foreign countries.
During the 1970s and early 1980s, the trend in East German agriculture was toward
larger units; some crop-producing collectives and state-owned farms combined to
create Agricultural Cooperatives holding up to 4,000 or 5,000 hectares. These
agribusinesses, known as Cooperative Departments of Crop Production
("Kooperative Abteilung Pflanzenproduktion" – KAP ), which included food-
processing establishments, became the dominant form of agricultural enterprise in
crop production. In the early 1980s, specialization also increased to include livestock
production.
In 1985, East German agriculture employed 10.8 percent of the labor force, received
7.4 percent of gross capital investments, and contributed 8.1 percent to the country's
net product. Farms were usually organized either in state-owned farms
("Volkseigenes Gut") or collective farms ("Landwirtschaftliche
Produktionsgenossenschaften").
Development phases in
chronological order
First phase: expropriation of land and
redistribution to new farmers
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