to the
quantity and quality of the work performed and thereby to eliminate
inequities of the earlier method. It is also meant to provide a steady
and assured income to all members who contribute a specified minimum of
workdays per month. If, for reasons beyond its control, a farm's
receipts turn out to be lower than the amount legally distributed to its
members during the year, the shortage may be covered by a long-term bank
credit. As a further inducement for farmers to remain on the land, their
social security benefits, generally much lower than those of industrial
workers, were substantially liberalized.

The extent to which the new pay system has been put into practice is not
known. Effective January 1, 1971, a minimum wage of 300 lei (for value
of leu, see Glossary) per month was to be paid to all male farmers who
worked regularly at least twenty days and to all women who worked
fifteen days. A survey published by a collective farm organ in March of
that year found that within a single county twenty-one out of twenty-two
farms had not taken the trouble to forward the necessary documents to
the Agricultural Bank and apply for the funds with which to pay their
members. Various excuses were offered by the farm chairmen for their
lack of action. The chairmen, farm directors, and brigade leaders,
however, were reported to have taken appropriate steps to secure their
own minimum pay.

The marketing of farm products by collective farms is based on
officially fixed prices and monopoly-buying powers of state procurement
agencies and the food-processing industry. Products move into government
stocks through contracts between the farms and state agencies for
quantities specified by the government; through payments in kind for
services rendered by agricultural mechanization stations, flour mills,
and other specialized government agencies; and, in the case of meat and
wool, in the form of compulsory deliveries. Any products remaining after
the obligations to the state have been met may be sold in open markets.

State Farms

Through consolidation of 370 previously existing state agricultural
enterprises, the farm reorganization of February 1971 created 145 larger
enterprises subordinated to the Department of State Agriculture in the
Ministry of Agriculture. In addition, seventy-four state agricultural
enterprises for fattening hogs, raising poultry, and producing feeds and
hothouse vegetables were subordinated to four spe