ALBANIAN AGRICULTURE - A PAINFUL TRANSITION FROM COMMUNISM TO FREE-MARKET CHALLENGES

This paper focuses on Albanian agricultural policies during the period after the Second World War. A communist type of agrarian reform was c arried out in 1945/6, based on the principle ' land belongs to those w ho till it.' This reform was soon followed by a collectivization proce ss, resulting in the creation of agricultural co-operatives, the proce ss being finished in 1960. This paper describes how the peasants gradu ally lost practically all rights to farm private plots. It also gives the background to the general economic and social crisis at the end of the 1980s, which resulted in the collapse of the socialist economy. C o-operatives and the state farms were divided and the land distributed to the peasantry. This process of privatization is being carried out under difficult circumstances. Although the government has issued spec ial laws, their implementation at the local level is inefficient due t o a lack of co-ordination. The new class of private farmers is faced w ith great problems. Food production is mainly at a subsistence level, and the opportunities to improve agricultural conditions are limited b y a lack of capital, the fragmentation of land and poor infrastructure .