ALBANIAN AGRICULTURE - FROM THE COOPERATI VE TO SUBSISTENCE FARMING

After 45 years of increasingly constrictive agricultural collectivizat ion, the fall of the communist regime in Albania has, since 1990, resu lted in the almost total fragmentation of co-operatives and state farm s into 379,000 family farms. with an average holding of 1.85 hectare a phenomenon unique in Eastern Europe. But the disorganization of the m arket. and the irrigation systems, seems for the time being to be cond emning the new owners to a subsistence economy as witness the drop in production, and the preference given to small-scale animal husbandry. Far from providing a solution to the problem of over-population in rur al Albania, the agricultural reform is being accompanied by a massive emigration to Greece and Italy, which in its turn is likely to bring a bout changes in the new agrarian structures and agricultural systems.