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The Influence of "Family" on Agrarian Structure: Revisiting the Family Farm Debate in Bulgaria and Southern Russia

Posted on: Tuesday, 5 July 2005, 12:00 CDT

INTRODUCTION

The development of "family farming" was a hot topic in studies of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) in the early 1990s. Proponents saw the creation of Western, family-style farms as the antidote to the low productivity characterising the large-scale Soviet structures (Lerman, 1998). Early anticipation of a quick fix through "shock therapy" soon receded into arguments over the causes of the apparent failure of privatisation reforms (Stiglitz, 1999; Wegren, 1998). National agricultural production levels in all CEE states dropped rapidly in the early 1990s as a result of system instability, sometimes to as low as 30% of their 1989 levels (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development [OECD], 1998). As of 1998, although agricultural production had started to rebound, none of the CEE countries had regained their 1989 production levels (OECD, 1998). Neither did family farming appear to any degree. Despite widely varying land privatisation programmes and national policy structures, agriculture across CEE is marked by dualism-the unexpected resilience of large-scale, Soviet-style structures, and an increase in the number of small-scale, almost subsistence-style, agricultural units (Swain, 2000).

In engaging in a discussion of structural change in Central and Eastern Europe, this article focuses on the social relations of production that are influencing the evolution of independent and co- operative farms. This is in direct contrast to recent analyses of structural change in agriculture in CEE that have largely focussed at the macro level: evaluations of the relative productivity of independent versus co-operative agriculture (Mathijs and Vranken, 2000; Sarris et al., 1999; Thiele and Brodersen, 1999), and analysis of the political economy of agrarian reforms (Swinnen, 1997). The connection between farm and family is foundational to studies of agrarian structural change in the West, but has had little if any exploration in Central and Eastern Europe to date. The term "family" as utilised in this article is a metaphor for two fundamental aspects of Western family farming: access to resources through kinship ties and the reproduction of the joint farm and family unit across generations. These themes emerged from an inductive study of agrarian livelihood strategies in Bulgaria and southern Russia, and were then analysed in reference to similar literature on family farming.

The lack of "cross-fertilisation" in the literatures on family farming and agrarian change in Central and Eastern Europe may in part be due to the notable differences in starting position for the agrarian change processes. As Bezemer (2002) discussed, the Soviet governments actively destroyed the peasant structures that served as foundations for agrarian transition in the West. Quite simply, there were no peasant holdings from which family farming could evolve. The impetus to bring the literature on family farming into the discussion of agrarian change in CEE in this study arose from earlier work by the author (Small, 2002). In this study of social capital in the Moscow region, it became clear that revitalised collective farms continued to play a major social role in community life through ongoing support to social services and cultural events. Moreover, the few independent farms in the region had social relations similar to those of Western family farms. It is these issues of social relations of production, from the perspective of the producers (rather than the enterprise management), which are explored in the study presented here.

In discussing the influence of family on the structural changes in agriculture, the question inevitably arises of the extent to which the farming enterprises in the study sites can be considered family farms. The intent of this article is not to evaluate progress toward this apparent ideal. Independent farms are anomalies throughout most of Central and Eastern Europe and appear likely to remain so in the study sites.1 Rather, the intent is to demonstrate the influence of local actor strategies on the resilience of the large-scale Soviet-style forms. These findings in turn are used to inform a discussion on the assumptions embedded in Western thinking about the persistence of the family farm.

SUPPORTING LITERATURE

In order to "set the stage" for the discussion of study findings, a brief introduction to the literature on local level change processes in Central and Eastern Europe is provided before turning attention to the facets of family farming explored in the study. The significance of macro issues of land reform, economic decline, and Soviet agricultural development are discussed, with specific reference to the study sites, in a later section.

"Family" in Agriculture in Central and Eastern Europe

There is limited micro level research about the experiences and ideology of agricultural producers in CEE, and how their actions have shaped transition at the local level. There are significant anthropological and rural development literatures, but these focus on rural residents and communities as wholes, rather than agricultural producers or agrarian structures in particular. However, both literatures provide significant evidence that "family" might be even more influential in agrarian structural change in CEE than in the West. During the Soviet period, extensive, family-based networks of informal exchange and support became a significant coping mechanism, circumventing bureaucracy and operating below the levels of government scrutiny. Extended family relationships took on an economic role arguably beyond that of most Western societies. Chevalier (2001) demonstrated that this informal social structure has continued into the post-Soviet period, through her description of complex networks of household exchange in rural Bulgaria. Brown and Kulcsar (2001), and O'Brien, Patsiorkovsky, and Dershem (2000) also demonstrated the prevalence of informal household exchange in more empirical studies of Hungary and Russia respectively.

Family and the Structure of Agriculture Debate

Concepts of access to resources through kinship ties and reproduction of the joint farm and family unit are foundational elements of what is known as "the Agrarian Question". Sociologists as far back as Marx and Weber predicted the demise of family-based production, as part of the transition from feudalism to market capitalism (Newby, 1987). As such, their theories supported the classical economic contention that family farms would disappear in the face of economies of scale (Munton and Marsden, 1991). Ironically it was Alexander Chayanov, a Russian agricultural extensionist (silenced by Stalin in the 1930s) who identified the limitations of this "horizontal concentration" (factory style production) in farming, due to the dependence of agriculture on land (Chayanov, 1927). He also pointed to the inherent resilience of family farming: a reflection of labour flexibility and the willingness of farm households to accept low and fluctuating income in order to maintain control of the farm enterprise. Agrarian transition disappeared from the Western research agenda for almost half of the 20th century, reappearing in the 1970s as the "family farm problem"-work that resurrected Chayanovian thought and Marxist political economy to probe the apparent mystery of family farm persistence.

The interconnectedness of farm and family is fundamental to the "family farm problem". Gray (1998) argued that the family and farm are "consubstantial"-so mutually dependent on each other for survival and reproduction that it is meaningless to consider them separately. Definitions of family farming place the family as central to the farm operation management, investment of financial resources and labour, and in receiving the return on their investment. Gasson and Errington's (1993) book The Farm Family Business emphasised the economic control of the farm as a business, in recognition that farming is decreasingly dependent on the family labour supply, due to increases in size. A competing definition by Djurfeldt (1996) emphasised the overlapping of units of production, consumption, and kinship. Ironically, as farming operations come to more closely resemble the capitalist businesses envisioned by early theorists, the persistence of family farming has ceased to become a question and instead has become a goal, reflecting a "post- productivist" transition in Western agricultural policy.

Central to definitions of family farming is reproduction-the transference of the farm to successive generations through kinship ties. Perhaps due to its longevity as an agrarian form, family farming has within it an ethos of intergenerational continuity, and the survival of the farm as a family operation is a characterising goal of family farm operators. The interest of farm "children" in maintaining control of the farm enterprise is an assumption embedded in family farming research. Western researchers fail to question why people start farms, to the extent that there is little if any literature addressing this question. The studies that do address agrarian motivation in the West take as their star\ting points the perspectives of existing farm operators. This is perhaps because farmers throughout the West are overwhelmingly from farm stock, even if they did not directly inherit their farming enterprise from their parents (see for example Elder and Conger, 2000; Symes, 1990).

As farming sizes increase, however, so does the initial investment required to initiate a new farm business. Symes (1990) in his discussion of British farming, revealed that family succession is becoming more, rather than less, important over time.. Farming is becoming a "closed" occupation: only those able to access sufficient resources (land, labour, and capital), most easily through inheritance or intergenerational transfer, are able to establish or maintain a viable farming operation. Even so, it is not always possible to transfer the farm, nor is there necessarily a willing successor. This has implications for the viability and market orientation of the farm both short and long term. Studies on farming succession have found that farm operators who are without successors, or without formal succession plans, are less likely to invest in the development of their operations (Bryden et al., 1993).

THE STUDY

Findings presented in this article emerged from an inductive study of agricultural producers in Bulgaria and Southern Russia.2 Qualitative interviews were conducted with 151 current and former independent farmers and agricultural employees in Dobrich and Plovdiv regions, Bulgaria, and in Pavlovsky and Krimsk regions in Krasnodar Territory Russia. The interviews focused on the experience and outlook of study participants: demographics, current and past connections to agriculture, household sources of income, commercial orientation, future orientation, market integration, and personal motivation, as well as the structural characteristics of the farm enterprises. The choice of study sites was designed to capture some of the variations within the countries, while ensuring geographic similarity between the study sites. The match between field sites in Krasnodar and Bulgaria is not perfect, and was intended primarily to reduce structural differences based on commodity type.

The use of study sites in two post-Soviet countries with widely diverging agricultural policy structures allowed the researcher to identify similar trends in the influence of social relations, in effect controlling for policy influences. The influence of contextual features such as land reform, pre-existing agrarian forms, and evolution of agricultural policy are clearly significant to the changing structure of agriculture, and will be described briefly here for the purpose of providing a context for the following discussion of the social relations of production. In order to simplify the discussion, the state and co-operative farms of the Soviet period are referred to as collective farms, and the reorganised units of the 1990s as co-operative farms. The significant legal differences between and within countries during the Soviet period are not directly relevant to this discussion.

Structure of Agriculture in the Soviet Period

Collectivisation in Russia occurred in the early 1930s and in Bulgaria in the early 1950s. As a result, many Bulgarians, but very few Russians, can personally recall the collectivisation process and preceding agrarian forms. Prior to collectivisation, land in both countries was largely held in small peasant farms, with some continuation of semi-feudal relations.3 The collective farms of the late 1980s had maintained their sizes from a scaling up process in the early 1970s, when government policy in both countries dictated the amalgamation of smaller, typically single village centred, collective farms into complexes that engulfed entire municipalities. In Krasnodar Territory, these complexes reached 22 000 hectares; in Bulgaria, 78 000 hectares. The resultant staffing reached into the thousands per operation in both countries, with administrative staff typically outnumbering the primary production workers.

Home production or the self-provisioning of meat, dairy products, and vegetables has a strong tradition in both countries. During the Soviet period, rural residents were allowed to retain plots of land around their village homes, and were allocated land on the outskirts of the village, often through their employment on a collective farm. Because the countries of Central and Eastern Europe have traditionally had much larger rural populations than is typical of the West, most urbanits retain rural connections through parents or grandparents who continue to live or maintain a family lodging in their village of birth. An important component of social life through norms of reciprocity and exchange during the Soviet period, these household garden plots became a significant buffer against food insecurity in the early 1990s.

Implications of Land Reform

As is characteristic of most of Central and Eastern Europe, Bulgaria engaged in massive land privatisation and agricultural restructuring in the early 1990s. The collective farms were disbanded, and land and equipment privatised by restitution to the owners, or their heirs, of the late 1940s. Bulgarian inheritance laws divide land equally amongst all heirs, a feature that was already resulting in land fragmentation in the 1940s. As a result, most land parcels currently range in size from .5 to 5 hectares. Early legislation encouraged the formation of voluntary agricultural co-operatives, but land could also be farmed individually. By 2000 (Bulgarian National Statistical Institute [BNSI], 2001), 86.2% of agricultural land was held privately, including 27.9% in agricultural co-operatives and 54.1% in independent farms. Current co-operatives typically range between 100 and 2000 hectares, with 5 to 20 employees, and at least seven (but more typically several hundred) shareholders. The Bulgarian National Statistical Institute (in Kopeva et al., 2002) reported that in 1997, 86% of independent farms in Bulgaria cultivated 1 hectare of land or less, and only 1% cultivated an area greater than 5 hectares. This means that there are potentially over 1 million "independent farms" in Bulgaria, relative to approximately 3000 co-operatives.

In contrast, the agrarian structures of Krasnodar Territory appear almost stable. Collective farms, and the land they operated, were formally privatised through allocation of land and equipment shares to current workers in the early 1990s. Workers wanting to attempt independent farming could withdraw between 2 and 5 hectares of land, in addition to equipment, from the collective, ft on- collective farm workers could access land through a government pool. The collective farms, now typically privatised as shareholder co- operatives, thus retained much of their organisational form and scale from the Soviet period, with sizes ranging from 2000 to 14 000 hectares. This initial structural stability is beginning to erode, as less financially viable co-operatives enter bankruptcy proceedings and disburse what assets remain. The number of independent farmers in Krasnodar Territory is approximately 12 000, relative to approximately 350 revitalised collective farms.

Fundamental differences in land reform processes set the stage for significant differences in agricultural holdings, beyond the prevalence of independent versus co-operative agriculture. Both independent farms and co-operatives are on average almost 10 times larger in Krasnodar Territory, despite similarities in commodities produced. Averages, however, are precisely that. The significant land rental market in Bulgaria has resulted in a number of large independent farmers, and the number is growing as co-operatives disband and their managers buy or rent the land of their former members.

Although the dominant political rhetoric regarding land reform in Bulgaria, and to some degree in Russia, was of "returning the land to the people", the reality was trial few people who had participated in pre-Soviet peasant farms were physically able to participate in a recreation of this agrarian form in the 1990s. Moreover, the entire Soviet agricultural system including education, suppliers, and markets, was oriented toward large-scale agriculture. Discussions of the failure of agrarian reform have identified lack of attention to up and downstream processes, as well as limited investment in agriculture in general, as primary issues in the poor productivity characterising the post-communist period (Wegren, 1998). But these issues, while significant, do not represent the whole picture. What is missing is the response of agrarian households to this changing macro context.

FINDINGS

Independent Farmers

Independent farmers in this study operated "farms" ranging in size from 1 to 8000 hectares. For these purposes, "independent farmers" were defined as anyone personally producing agricultural commodities for the primary purpose of market sales. Their primary distinguishing factor was their legal registration as independent farmers in Krasnodar Territory, Russia, or operating outside the legal definition of co-operatives in Bulgaria. This included backyard or garden production if it was market oriented. Home production was not afforded a separate category in this study, as it is ubiquitous amongst rural residents. The significance of home production to independent farmers and agricultural workers is included in the separate discussions.

Independent farmers in the study ranged in age from 28 to 80 years, with the oldest farmers found in Bulgaria. Otherwise, there were no significant age differences between the respondents of the two countries. "Farmers" were predominantly male, but farmwomen were interviewed as the household respondent in approximately one quarter of the cases. Altogether, 42 Bulgarian and 29 Russian (current and former) farmers were interviewed.

The Influence of Family on Independent Farming

The mo\st obvious influence of family on farmers was access to land. In Krasnodar Territory, Russia, co-operative farm workers withdrawing land from the enterprise typically withdrew the land of at least two other family members, usually parents or spouses, to form larger units, in Bulgaria, connection was even more direct because land was restituted to previous owners. The combined factors of unemployment and access to land through a family member were the most common motivations of Bulgarian small-scale independent farmers. Even the farmers with the largest holdings established them in the villages of a parent, where the land restituted to the relative acted as a base. Only two of the Bulgarian respondents, both large-scale farmers, did not have land restituted to them. Interestingly, those two identified themselves as businessmen, whereas most participants in this category identified themselves as farmers.

Resources beyond land were also accessed through family relations. Extended family connections were drawn into play when establishing a farm, acting as sources of information (free access to specialist advice), services (machinery sharing), and markets (through contract relationships). The majority of farmers were local to the Tea in which they farm, as could be expected given the characteristics of the land privatisation process. This usually meant multiple relatives on which to draw. It was difficult to determine the precise impact of family resources on the resultant scale of production, as respondents were reluctant to address issues of financial resources, particularly in Bulgaria where the huge size of some of the farming operations suggested a degree of informal relations beyond those of typical kinship exchange.

The vast majority of independent farms of all sizes were being operau .1 by families, typically one lead farmer with full or part- time support from nuclear or extended family members. Farms operating in partnership were also usually based on kinship relations. The exception to this was a small number of single- person operations, which were typically part-time, small-scale enterprises operated by an individual who already had full-time employment. Family members were thus usually an important source of labour and skills. Even if employed elsewhere, family members contributed part-time on weekends and provided support through bookkeeping and manual labour. This pattern flowed from the tradition of home production-offspring have traditionally come to the village on weekends to both visit and assist parents or grandparents with home production, returning to the city with produce in kind.

Farming also tends to run in families. Many of the farmers in the study decided to attempt farming because they had seen the successful operations of parents or siblings. Alternately, they themselves may have been the initiator, with siblings and children following in their footsteps. Succession planning was already becoming an issue. Most farmers justified the ongoing investment and expansion of their enterprises on the basis that their children will continue the operation in the future. For operators without successors, for whom retirement age was approaching (or already past), few plans for operational development were evident. Moreover, in these cases what profits that existed were more likely to be invested in areas of future benefit to offspring, such as housing, rather than the farm business.

Although the vast majority of participants in this category considered themselves farmers, and had parents who had worked in agriculture, few identified a sense of agrarian heritage as significant to their decision to become independent farmers. Instead, they identified the desire for independence, the opportunity of access to land, and the opportunity for profit. Only the oldest of the Bulgarian farmers could recall participating in their parents ' farm, and they expressed regret that their children did not have the sense of connection to the family land that they themselves held. They attributed it to the lack of direct experience working on a family holding, which they believed to be fundamental to this sense of heritage. Although they were motivated to start farms to continue their parents' legacy, they felt that they were too old and that their children already had established jobs and would not want to start farming at their current life stage. Younger independent farmers in both countries said that they did not have a sense of agrarian heritage, even if they worked on a collective farm. They hoped that this might develop in their children, so that their children would desire to continue the family enterprise.

Agricultural Workers

In this study, the workers on co-operative and independent farms were considered together. It became clear during the interviews that there were no significant differences in outlook and experience between workers on independent farms and those on co-operative farms, even if the workers were shareholders. This is largely because they saw little difference between the management structure of the old collectives and new co-operatives, and few if any rewards from their shareholder status. Of the 88 workers in the study, only half had worked their entire lives on collective or co-operative farms (two thirds of the Russian workers, relative to one third of the Bulgarian workers).4 This reflected the greater structural stability of the Russian co-operatives. The nature of work for employees on independent farms and Bulgarian co-operatives was remarkably similar. These enterprises usually employed less than 15 full-time employees, who fulfil positions in management, bookkeeping, agronomy, livestock care, and equipment operation and repair. Russian co-operative farms, employing between 200 and 600 people, had a wider range of positions, adding cafeteria workers, social workers, and extensive administration to an expanded version of the co-operative and independent farming staffs.

Workers in the study ranged in age from 18 to 70 years, with no significant differences in age between the two countries. In general, however, agricultural workers were toward the older end of the work force, and often included pensioners supplementing meagre incomes. Altogether, 33 female and 55 male (current and former) agricultural employees were interviewed.

The Influence of Family on Agricultural Workers

Employment in agriculture clearly represented security to those involved. Life-long workers rarely expressed a desire to attempt independent farming, preferring the stability and lower levels of risk associated with their current jobs. In both countries, the new agricultural workers were typically people who lost their jobs or underwent a family crisis such as divorce or bereavement, and returned to their home village to the homes of family members. Once there, they took the only jobs available: agricultural work. Formal training in agriculture was not necessarily a pre-requisite. Many of the new employees drew on childhood experiences of working along side parents to adjust to their new occupations. Living in the village also provided them with ready access to garden plots for self-provisioning, which significantly reduced income needs.

Generations of families have worked on the collective farms in Russia, but study participants reported no particular sense of pride in this heritage. The same was true in Bulgaria. Both Bulgarians and Russians reported a sense of pride in the size and perceived profitability of the historic collective farms, generally agreeing that the best time to live in the village was in the heyday of collective farming, the 1970s. Some Russian participants indicated that at that time, there was pride in having multiple generations of the family work on the same collective farm. That pride has disappeared with the low wages and economic insecurity of the 1990s. The vast majority of agricultural workers did not want their children to work in agriculture, largely due to the low-income potential and resultant standard of living, but worried that their children will have no other options. Workers did express the belief, however, that largescale industrialised agriculture was the most productive agrarian form, frequently pointing to the increasing size of Western farming operations as evidence.

The primary difference between workers who became farmers and those who stayed in the new co-operatives was access to land combined with either an entrepreneurial or an unemployed family member. Entrepreneur in this study referred to an individual with personal ambitions to start a new business of any kind. Although agricultural workers identified insufficient resources (access to land and credit) as reasons for not attempting independent farming in both Russia and Bulgaria, this did not appear to be the primary issue. Families with access to multiple land and equipment shares as well as the credit more readily available in the early 1990s stayed in the co-operative, while other, apparently less endowed workers, started farms. One entrepreneurial family member was sufficient (but necessary) to pull the entire family into independent agricultural production. In the case of a family with two entrepreneurs, there was usually a second business established, often non-agricultural. An unemployed family member could also have inspired the drawing together of family resources, in the form of land and finances, to provide the opportunity to farm.

DISCUSSION

The independent farms in the study are largely "family farms", in the sense that they are operated by nuclear or extended families. Although there is as yet no "family farming ideology" or sense of heritage, family-style farms appear to have arisen in the study sites for the same reasons they have survived in the West. That is, the flexible labour of the farm household combined with access to land, in Bulgaria through inherit\ance. Moreover, they evidence similar issues of succession and goals of reproduction, despite wide variations in scale. Although not currently in existence, interviewees believed it likely that ideals of family farming will develop over time.

Interesting as these similarities might be to the Western observer, family farming at the scale recognised in the West remains an anomaly in both of the study countries. In Russia, independent farms occupy only 6.6% of agricultural land (Goskomstat of Russia, 1999). In Bulgaria, where over 54.1 % of agricultural land is in independent farms, over 80% of farms are less than 1 hectare in size (NRI in Kopeva et al., 2002). While the literature on family farming in the West has proved useful for the discussion of independent farming in the study sites, can the influence of "family" provide insight into the resilience of the large-scale co-operatives characteristic of Central and Eastern Europe?

Agricultural workers appear to perceive family resources differently than independent farmers. With the absence of an entrepreneur or a need to create employment for a family member, worker households are characterised by their preference for the security of waged employment, regardless of apparent resource access. This preference has implications for the structure of agriculture, because the unexpected resilience of co-operative forms in the study sites can in part be attributed to low labour costs: an available workforce that will work for low pay (or in the case of Russia without pay for long periods) in return for the security of employment and future pensions.5

The influence of family is subtle in worker reluctance to sever ties to co-operative farming. It is largely through kinship relations that people access housing in the village. For those that returned to the village in the post-communist period, the opportunity of housing and self-provisioning was a primary draw, with agricultural employment a secondary issue. Once located in the village, however, the access to land that originally drew them ties them in place, because attempting ventures that involve leaving the village housing, the home garden, and the place of employment involve a high level of risk in the current uncertain financial climate.

Similarly, long-term village residents are also reluctant to leave the security of the village to pursue potentially more lucrative, but riskier ventures. As a result, they continue to work for low pay in whatever positions are available through local independent and co-operative agricultural enterprises, or if the co- operative has been disbursed (as is the case in Bulgaria and is increasingly becoming the case in Russia), work on their own land. The result is the resilience of co-operative structures and tiny, fragmented "farms". The slow development of a land market in Central and Eastern Europe is in large part due to the unwillingness of people to give up permanent access to a long-term source of security. Thus access to land and housing through kinship resources is a double-edged sword.

The comparison of independent farmers with farm workers also raises the issue of entrepreneurialism. The primary limiting factor in the decision to undertake independent farming appears to be the absence of a business minded family member, rather than differential access to resources. Identification of agricultural producers as entrepreneurs appears in the Western typologies of family farmers, which invariably include an agribusiness, accumulator, or entrepreneurial farming type, contrasted with conservatives, traditionalists, or yeomen. Discussion of the differences hinges around the juxtaposition of modernity and tradition in the farming enterprise: the influence of modernity in the increasing industrialisation of agricultural production, coming in conflict with values of family succession and traditional practices (Djurfeldt, 1996).

It is clear from this study that agrarian ideology is not (as yet) an important factor for agricultural workers. Agricultural workers evidence no particular pride in continuing in the occupations of their parents, despite identifying large-scale, industrial agriculture as the most productive of the agricultural forms. Neither do they want their children to follow after them. This has implications for the longevity of the co-operative enterprises. Whereas independent farmers anticipate passing their enterprises on to their children, workers do not have this desire or capability. Further, they do not retain their employment out of loyalty to the enterprise, or belief in the ideal of co-operative production, but through lack of viable alternatives. Although there could be a level of inertia in their continuation of agricultural employment, this apparent lack of attachment to the enterprise suggests that the development of alternative rural job opportunities would have a secondary impact on co-operative farm viability, through reduced access to cheap labour.

The Western family farming literature includes multiple studies of the determinants of entrepreneurship, beyond those explored in farming typologies. Multiple studies have identified factors correlating to entrepreneurial activity and innovation, such as educational achievement and off-farm work experience, particularly in the context of encouraging farm diversification, and transition out of farming through pluriactivity (van den Ban and Hawkins, 1996). This is an area for further investigation.

Implications for the Study of "Family Farming"

The study of family influence in agrarian change in Central and Eastern Europe raises issues for investigation in the West. In studying the influence of kinship ties on agrarian change in CEE, it became obvious that extended family networks, not simply household members, played a significant role in access to resources. The study of family farming in the West, although extending to multiple generations operating a single farming operation, rarely broadens to address kinship ties beyond the immediate family level. The reproduction of family farming units over multiple generations throughout the West makes it self evident that significant numbers of a given farmer 's extended family members will also operate farms. The implications of these implied social networks can warrant studies of their influence on family farm resiliency.

The existence of an extensive "worker" population in the study sites raises two issues for the study of family farming in the West. The first is the relative paucity of literature on agricultural employees. The vast majority of the literature investigates farmers and their households, relegating the increasing number of agricultural employees to infrequent studies of seasonal labour. Findings from this study suggest that worker social relations play a significant role in the resiliency of the enterprises where they are employed, and thus warrant further investigation in the West. Furthermore, agricultural workers and their employers are rarely considered in the same study. This apparent divide appears artificial when related to the situation in Central and Eastern Europe, and raises the second issue, the similarities between CEE workers and subsets of the Western farming population.

The risk averse, employment-centred "worker" population of the study sites share similar traits with the productivist, status quo based contingent identified as a farming type in much of the classification literature. Bowler et al. (1996) and Shucksmith and Herrmann (2002) both identified farmer cohorts that can be characterised by their inheritance of the farm and traditional management style, with limited innovation, diversification, or expansion. In essence, they adopt a productivist, or "worker" role, continuing the farm operation in much the same way as it had been done in the past. This raises the question of the extent to which the prevalence and apparent resilience of family farming is in consistency with an ethos in Western cultures of independence and agrarian heritage. Direct support for family farmers is embedded in the policy structures of Western nations, reflecting a cultural belief in the importance of family farming. Combine this with labour flexibility, access to resources through inheritance, and an ethos of family farm survival, and the apparent mystery of family farm survival is no mystery at all. If, indeed, the difference between Western family farmers and agricultural workers is to a degree artificial, joint studies of both populations could prove instructive to the understanding of the increasing number of Western corporate-style farms.

The evolving agrarian forms of CEE are also fertile ground for the exploration of agrarian ideology formation. The independent farmers in the study, although anomalies in terms of the larger structures, expressed ideals and developed agrarian forms that are similar to Western family farms. This is remarkable given the significant differences in experiences and opportunities of agricultural producers in the study sites. However, the new "family farmers" cannot expect the government support that has favoured Western family farms for decades. Recent legislation in Krasnodar Territory has made it illegal to purchase less than 300 hectares of land in a single transaction, effectively eliminating the potential for existing independent farmers to expand, or for new farmers to increase their scale beyond 5 hectares. Bulgarian independent farmers currently report difficulty in accessing EU development funding due to the informal nature of most of their business transactions. The evolution of this fledgling agrarian form could yet provide further insights into the sources of resiliency in farm and family units.

CONCLUSION

In retrospect, the widespread acceptance of the idea that family farming would become the dominant agrarian form in Central and Eastern Europe is not surprising. Not o\nly has family farming dominated the structure of agriculture in the "developed" West for over a century, the promotion of small-scale individual agriculture has been the dominant theme in international development initiatives in the South for the past 50 years (Ellis and Biggs, 2001). What is surprising is that the wealth of literature on family farming in the West has not been utilised to increase understanding of the evolving agrarian forms in CEE. The value in utilising family farming literature for the discussion of agrarian change is not only the identification of social dynamics underlying the resiliency of Soviet structures, but also the identification of biases inherent in the family farming literature itself.

This article has explored two fundamental aspects of the social relations of family farming: access to resources through kinship ties and the reproduction of the joint farm and family unit over time. The family farm literature also contains extensive work on the internal dynamics of the farm household, which was not explored in this study. Neither were the social relations of co-operative farm managers addressed here, largely because the social resources that appear dominant in their strategies would open up a discussion of class relations, which was beyond the scope of this article. Thus the range of opportunities represented in the family farming literature for increasing understanding of agrarian change in Central and Eastern Europe have yet to be fully exploited. In turn, these new studies will offer reciprocal opportunities for fresh perspectives on agrarian change processes in the West.

This paper presents an exploration of the influence of "family" on structural changes in agriculture in Central and Eastern Europe. In the study, the term "family" is used as a metaphor for two fundamental aspects of Western family farming: access to resources through kinship ties and the reproduction of the joint farm and family unit across generations. The discussion is based on findings from inductive field research into agrarian livelihood strategies in Bulgaria and southern Russia. One hundred and fifty one interviews were conducted with co-operative farm employees and independent farmers in Dobrich and Plovdiv regions in Bulgaria, and Pavlovsky and Krimsk regions of Krasnodar Territory, Russia. Although family- operated farm enterprises are the clear minority of agrarian forms in the study sites, "family" is found to play a significant role in the evolution of agrarian structures, particularly through dynamics of land access and entrepreneurialism. In questioning the influence of "family" on agrarian development, the author argues that elements of the Western family farm debate are useful in understanding the resilience of large-scale, co-operative farming in Central and Eastern Europe. Further, she argues that the analysis of the emergent agrarian forms in the study sites can be used to challenge assumptions embedded in Western thinking about the persistence of the family farm.

1 Notable exceptions are Poland and Slovenia, where agriculture was not collectivised to the degree characteristic of most Central and Eastern European countries.

2 Krasnodar Territory is situated in the south of European Russia, with two of its boundaries formed by the Black and Azov Seas. Bulgaria is located on the opposite (western) side of the Black Sea, but somewhat further south.

3 Krasnodar Territory is unusual as a Russian province in this regard. It was settled in the 1870s by Ukrainian soldiers (Cossacks), as a reward for their defeat of the Turkish army. The feudalism characteristic of most European Russia in the 1800s did not occur, meaning that private "farmers" were much more common in the region by the 1930s than is typical of western Russia.

4 In Bulgaria, some of the workers are also farmers. Thus, the number of farmers in the study (71) combined with the number of workers (88) is higher than the total interviewees (151).

5 Pensions in both Bulgaria and Russia are based on years worked, and a value standard associated with job type. Unemployment dramatically reduces pension eligibility. In a situation where few other jobs are available, it is more rational to work with the promise of pay and pension in the future, than to be unemployed. In addition, workers on co-operative farms have ready access to the enterprises' resources: theft of co-operative farm property is rampant, particularly in situations where employees receive infrequent pay.

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LEE-ANN SMALL*

* Department of Land Economy, University of Aberdeen. Mailing address: L2C7 Minto, R.R. #3, Harriston, Ontario, NOG 1ZO, Canada.

Copyright University of Calgary, Department of Sociology Summer 2005

Source: Journal of Comparative Family Studies

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