GalleryLatvian Farms
Aid from the fraternal Soviet republics in the form of tractors, combines and other farm machinery for Latvia's collective farms and state farms helped to create a stable economic foundation enabling the small peasant households to join together in big collective farms in 1949 and 1950.
The collective farm system put an end to the poverty-stricken existence led by tens of thousands of Latvia's farm labourers and small farm owners by ensuring a steady rise in agricultural production.
Latvia today produces far more milk per head of the population than either the United States or Sweden.
Between 1953 and 1958 the monetary income of Latvia's collective farms rose from 678 million roubles to 1,377 million roubles. During the same period the average cash payments to collective farms for their work increased three-fold, and payments in kind increased 50 per cent.
Latvian agriculture is to take a big step forward in the current seven-year period. It will continue to specialise in dairy products, pork and bacon and pedigree livestock farming.
In 1965 milk output will be from 50 to 70 per cent higher than in 1958; and meat production will increase 80 per cent, exceeding the 1940 level by 65 per cent.
The steep rise in head of cattle and livestock productivity will be achieved by creating a reliable fodder base, primarily by extending the area planted to maize.
By 1965 the major land reclamation project will have been carried out with the draining of 1,580,000 acres of swampland.
The level of agricultural mechanisation and electrification in Latvia will rise considerably. By 1965 the rural areas will be using 329 million kilowatt-hours of electric energy as against 57 million in 1958.
This means that every state farm and collective farm will be supplied with electricity and the chief labour-consuming jobs in farming and livestock breeding will be mechanised.
After discussing ways and means by which Latvian farming can be developed and thoroughly weighing all the pros and cons, the chairmen of collective farms, directors of state farms, and leading farm workers decided recently at an all-Latvian gathering that the seven-year targets in agriculture can be reached in five years.
Nikolai and Paulina Jacobson, for many years members of the Vanguard Collective Farm, Jelgava District, are a typical Latvian collective farm family. Together they receive about 15,000 roubles a year for their work, in addition to grain, potatoes, cabbage, sugar beet and other farm produce.
The Jacobsons have a vegetable garden of their own, 1¼ acres in size, and own a cow, pigs and chickens. They do not have to buy any food and are able to sell some of their milk, eggs and meat at the market.
"Out of the 15,000 roubles we spend about 8,000 on clothing," says Paulina Jacobson. "Another 3,000 goes for furniture and household articles. The remainder is put in the bank. Last year we bought a TV set, silk for dresses for myself, and a suit for my husband. We moved into a new three-room house not long ago and are gradually buying new furniture to make things still nicer.
"We have calculated that by the end of the seven-year plan we shall be earning almost twice as much as we do now."
The Jacobsons go to the collective farm recreation centre several times a week. They rarely miss a film showing there, and always attend the theatre whenever they visit Riga.
as part of the series "THE FIFTEEN SOVIET SOCIALIST REPUBLICS OF TODAY AND TOMMORROW."
We do not endorse the Soviet account of historical events or their circumstances contained therein as factual.
