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Van Atta 8 



family or smaller-group farms. However, free sale and mortgaging of land was 

 forbidden for ten years. During 1991. unprofitable farms were to be encouraged 

 to reorganize themselves, but no general reorganization of the countryside was 

 planned. 



A series of presidential and governmental decrees in December 1991 

 and January 1992 began the second stage of the land reform. Agricultural land 

 would be denationalized and given to the farms. By fvlarch 1. 1992, each 

 collective or state farm's "labor collective" was to decide whether the farm's land 

 would become their property as individuals, as a group, or in some other form. 

 By January 1. 1993. all farms were also to reorganize themselves and re 

 register with the state. 



Profitable farms could reorganize in three ways: 1) as new-style 

 collective farms (a hasty congress of collective farmers met in February 1992 to 

 approve a new. more liberal standard set of farm rules); 2) as farmer-owned 

 joint-stocic societies (essentially similar to westem Employee Stock Ownership 

 Plans); or 3) as associations of independent peasant farms in which land and 

 capital are held privately, but farmers woric together on one another's land for 

 specified purposes. They could also decide simply to go out of business. 

 Unprofitable farms were to be broken up. their assets sold to the farmers or 

 outsiders. If the farm's existing woric force did not wish to organize a new farm, 

 the State Land Fund would redistribute its land. 



Creation of individual farmsteads has been the most publicized part of 

 the agrarian reform. Only marginal political figures, such as the journalist Y urii 

 Chemichenko. argue that all the collective and state farms should be quickly 

 broken up. But many "peasant" family famns are needed, reform supporters say, 

 to give city dwellers incentive to return to the countryside and repopulate areas 



