Nigel Swain
Centre for Central and Eastern European Studies
University of Liverpool

"Here everyone stands on two feet" - small-scale farming in the post socialist rural transition: some examples from East Central Europe and the Balkans
 

The paper addresses the 'silent majority' of rural dwellers in the countries of Central Europe and the Balkans for whom self-supply
agriculture is an essential component of their life strategies without which they would not survive. The first section of the paper considers the importance of small-scale supplementary agriculture to rural dwellers during the socialist years. The second section considers the global context of the collapse of socialism and the economic environment in which post socialist supplementary agriculture emerged. It argues that if increasing income was the motivation behind most supplementary agricultural activity in the socialist years, under post socialism it has been more a question of replacing lost income.

The final two sections of the paper illustrate these processes. Section three reviews briefly some of the statistical evidence on the predominance of small-scale farming, while the final section presents some qualitative materials identifying six combinations of small-scale agriculture and other income sources based on interviews conducted in rural communities in Central Europe and the Balkans.
 

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