Survey reveals improvement in agricultural sector workers' attitudes toward land reform (08/20/00)

Survey reveals improvement in agricultural sector workers' attitudes toward land reform

by Roman Woronowycz
Kyiv Press Bureau

KYIV - A survey released by the International Finance Corporation (IFC) on attitudes toward the recently completed reform of collective agricultural enterprises indicates that the attitude toward land reform and the sale of land has improved among agricultural sector workers. However, workers still believe that their economic situation continues to worsen and that, whether or not they have an interest in the new corporations and cooperatives, they will continue to rely on garden plots as an assured source of income.

A second survey commissioned by the IFC, which is part of the World Bank Group, showed that nearly half of the farmers who have taken up free enterprise on their own are already making money.

Since a presidential decree on December 3, 1999, the Ukrainian agricultural sector has undergone extensive structural changes. Today government collective farms do not exist - save for less than a handful of exceptions. In the six months between the time of the decree and May 2000, thousands of collective farms were reorganized into limited stock corporations, farmers' cooperatives and private farms.

How the new arrangements will take hold will not be seen for several planting seasons, but a consensus is developing among experts that the Ukrainian farmer today is only beginning to see the advantages of private land ownership and a future for himself in a reformed agricultural industry.

The new attitude is developing slowly, after a roller-coaster ride of expectations. In 1996 many agricultural workers still believed that it was only a matter of time before the rebirth of the Ukrainian village would take place. That was followed by a period of considerable pessimism and cynicism by workers who had come to believe that independent Ukraine had consigned them to a life of poverty and that perhaps the old Communist system was the best for which they could have hoped.

"In 1996 there was still a feeling of euphoria," explained Oleksander Honcharuk, a consultant for the IFC from the Center for Social Expertise and Prognosis, which conducted the surveys. "The thinking was 'today we will work and tomorrow we will be well off.' The slow tempo of reforms killed that hope and brought widespread discouragement."

He explained that a growing number of people are now beginning to feel more confident that land reform was needed. He said that slightly more than one-third of agricultural workers support continued reforms, including a move to treat land as a commodity, about a third continue to hold negative views; and a third have not yet made a conclusive decision. The numbers are up over a 1998 survey in which only 22 percent expressed support for reforms. In 1996 the figure stood at 40 percent.

Even more telling is the fact that better than half of the workers now believe that the reorganization of the agricultural sector as directed by the December presidential decree was a needed and positive development. They also believe that the new privatized agricultural structures are better managed and that crop cultivation and production will improve as a result. In addition, the workers see less evidence of theft and drunkenness at the workplace

However, Mr. Honcharuk said that agricultural workers still do not fully understand the extent of their rights and opportunities in an agricultural system that has finally moved beyond government control.

Also, the survey released by the IFC on August 9 show that even as agricultural sector workers dare to think that they may have a future on the farm, they continue to see a worsening economic situation in the sector. One-fourth of the workers no longer see cash income and as such rely on their private land plots for their basic foodstuffs and for products with which to barter. Fully 85 percent evaluated their private plots as a significant source of income.

Reflecting a less than confident attitude towards going it alone, a majority of agricultural workers continue to keep their land shares within reorganized private agricultural enterprises (34 percent), although the figure has dropped considerably from 1998 when well more than half did so (60 percent). A third have said that they are ready to cede their land to others in kind or for lease, while another 7 percent said they would be willing to sell. Only 7 percent expressed a desire to form a private farm enterprise alone or with a partner.

Yet, just such agricultural units are showing themselves to be among the most profitable. Forty-seven percent of farm enterprises were profitable in 1999 with an average profitability level of 16 percent. Single families consisting of five members control about 60 percent of such farms. On average, private farmers cultivate three to four plots of land, which includes their home garden. The average area owned by a single farm is 4.4 hectares (10.8 acres). Farmers who also lease neighboring land cultivate plots averaging from 16.5 hectares (40.8 acres) to 20.9 hectares (51.6 acres). About 13 percent of private farmers currently lease land, while another 52 percent are planning to do so.

While the December presidential decree allowed for farmers to sell land that was distributed to them back in the early 1990 as long as it continued to be put to agricultural use, only 15 percent have done so thus far. Another 51 percent would like to buy additional land.

The surveys produced by the IFC came at the conclusion of a $40 million, five-year agricultural and land reform project initiated by the World Bank organization at the request of the Ukrainian government.

Its task was to facilitate the reform process and execute an informational and educational hands-on program to make agricultural sector directors and workers more familiar with the legal and practical mechanisms of private farming and ownership. The goal was to show the government what could be done and lay the groundwork for the changes that have finally taken place, explained Lubomyr Markevych, the assistant director of the privatization and land reorganization project of the IFC.

"Our intention was not to reform the agricultural sector," explained Mr. Markevych. "We wanted to develop the models and explain the resources needed to begin the process, so that there would be opportunities for the future."

Since August 1995 the IFC project has helped reorganize on a voluntary basis 86 collective agricultural enterprises, creating 163 private enterprises and 830 private family farms. The project involved more than 55,000 people and 240,000 hectares in 41 raions of the Donetsk, Chernihiv and Volyn oblasts, as well as Crimea.

Mr. Markevych said that initially the work was difficult because some raion and oblast leaders were hesitant and tended to look to Kyiv for direction. But in other areas, like the Volyn region, where the regional leaders took to reforms aggressively, success came more quickly.

Mr. Markevych explained that the December presidential decree psychologically offered a breakthrough moment for the agricultural sector because it gave executive authority to the changes, which propelled other previously hesitant oblasts into the reform process. It also closed the circle on the first stage of agricultural reform, with which the IFC was so closely associated.

"Now we are handing the baton over to the Ukrainian side," said Mr. Markevych. "Much effort still will be needed to continue forward and to solidify what has begun."

| Home Page |