Encroachment by builders upon agricultural and, more particularly, arable land was facilitated by the government's policy, pursued until the spring of 1968, of treating land as a free good and assigning no value to it in calculating the cost of industrial and housing investment projects. Arable land was especially attractive to builders because it required no expenditure for leveling.

In an attempt to prevent further waste of valuable farmland, a law for the protection and conservation of agricultural land was passed in May 1968. The law prohibited the diversion of farm acreages to nonagricultural uses, with the exception of special cases which, depending upon the nature and location of the land involved, required the approval of either the Council of State, the Council of Ministers, or the Superior Council of Agriculture (a government agency that functioned in lieu of a ministry for several years). Nonagricultural state organizations that held land that they could not cultivate were obligated to surrender it without payment to neighboring state or collective farms.

The conservation law enjoined socialized (collective and state) farms and private farmers to put all land to optimum use; called for a review of the building code to reduce the land areas allowed to individual construction projects; provided for the inclusion of the value of land in construction costs; and spelled out various other measures to safeguard and improve agricultural land. The law also directed the establishment of a land register, excluding lands of the socialized farms, to facilitate stricter controls over the remaining private farmers, who held 9.2 percent of the agricultural land and 4.6 percent of the arable acreage.

Heavy fines and criminal penalties, including imprisonment up to one year, were provided for infringements of the conservation law by enterprises and individuals. During the first year of the law's operation, fines were also to be imposed upon holders of uncultivated arable land, of improperly maintained orchards and vineyards, and of meadows and pastures on which maintenance work did not comply with agrotechnical rules. Like the establishment of the land register, this provision was also aimed at private farmers. A further provision stated that lands on which the described conditions continued after the first year were to be assigned to socialized farms for cultivation. The transferred land could be subsequently restored to the original owners under conditions prescribed by the Superior Council of Agriculture. The effect of the punitive regulations on private farm property was not apparent from the official statistics for 1968 and 1969.

Shortly after the adoption of the conservation law, the deputy chairman of the State Committee for Construction, Architecture, and Systematization published an article in which he stated that mere administrative regulations by the committee and the Superior Council of Agriculture could not ensure the proper use of land, particularly on the collective farms. He called for the development of appropriate economic levers based on an adaptation of "the systems that limit land waste in some capitalistic markets." This official's concern about the efficacy of the new legislation was well based. By 1970 the arable acreage had declined by 158,000 acres, at an average annual rate more than half again as large as the annual losses during the 1962-68 period.

ORGANIZATION

Collective and state farms are the principal types of farm organization (see table 9). Substantial areas of state agricultural land are also operated as subsidiary farms by various industrial and other economic organizations. Small private farms survive mainly in the mountainous regions where collectivization is impractical. In 1970 the state owned 30 percent of the farmland, about half of which was cultivated by state farms. Almost 61 percent of the land belonged to collective farms, including 6.6 percent in plots for the personal use of their members. The collective farm population consisted of almost 3.5 million families, including more than 10 million collective members. About 9 percent of the farmland was in the possession of private farmers.

Table 9. Agricultural Land in Romania, by Type of Ownership, 1969
(in thousands of acres)

ArablePastureMeadowVineyardOrchardTotal
State agricultural units 4,959 5,545 264 148 173 11,089
(State farms)( 4,129)( 688)( 170)(133)( 148)( 5,218)
Collective farms 18,075 1,315 1,712 682 692 22,476
(Private plots)( 1,969)( 20)( 54)(262)( 121)( 2,426)
Private farms 1,112 566 1,580 27 188 3,423
Total 24,146 7,426 3,506 857 1,053 36,988
Source: Adapted from Anuaral Statistic al Republicii Socialiste Romania, 1970 (Statistical Yearbook of the Socialist Republic of Romania, 1970), Bucharest, 1970, p. 253.

In order to raise agricultural productivity and output, the state and collective farm sectors underwent frequent organizational changes, the latest of which went into effect in February 1971. There was not sufficient evidence in early 1972 on the extent to which they had been put into practice and even less information on their economic effects.