332 Agricultural Revolutions and Change
at length in Scott (1998, ch. 8),^83 but some valuably suggestive evidence can be
gleaned from Soviet agriculture. If we think of particular crops, it is apparent that
collective farms were successful at growing some crops, especially the major grains:
wheat, rye, oats, barley and maize. They were notably inefficient at turning out
other products, especially fruits, vegetables, small livestock, eggs, dairy products
and flowers. Most of these crops were supplied from the minuscule private plots of
the kolkhoz members, even at the height of collectivization.^84 The systematic dif-
ferences between these two categories of crops helps to explain why their institu-
tional setting might vary.
Let us take wheat as an example of what I will call a ‘proletarian crop’ and
compare it with red raspberries, which I think of as the ultimate ‘petit-bourgeois
crop’. Wheat lends itself to extensive large-scale farming and mechanization. One
might say that wheat is to collectivized agriculture what the Norway spruce is to
centrally managed, scientific forestry. Once planted, it needs little care until har-
vest, when a combine can cut and thresh the grain in one operation and then blow
it into trucks bound for granaries or into railroad cars. Relatively sturdy in the
ground, wheat remains sturdy once harvested. It is relatively easy to store for
extended periods with only small losses to spoilage. The red raspberry bush, on the
other hand, requires a particular soil to be fruitful; it must be pruned annually; it
requires more than one picking, and it is virtually impossible to pick by machine.
Once packed, raspberries last only a few days under the best conditions. They will
spoil within hours if packed too tightly or if stored at too high a temperature. At
virtually every stage the raspberry crop needs delicate handling and speed, or all is
lost.
Little wonder, then, that fruits and vegetables – petit-bourgeois crops – were
typically not grown as kolkhoz crops but rather as side-lines produced by individ-
ual households. The collective sector in effect ceded such crops to those who had
the personal interest, incentive and horticultural skills to grow them successfully.
Such crops can, in principle, be grown by huge centralized enterprises as well, but
they must be enterprises that are elaborately attentive to the care of the crops and
to the care of the labour that tends them. Even where such crops are grown on
large farms, the farms tend to be family enterprises of smaller size than wheat farms
and are insistent on a stable, knowledgeable workforce. In these situations, the
small family enterprise has, in the terms of neoclassical economics, a comparative
advantage.
Another way in which wheat production is different from raspberry produc-
tion is that the growing of wheat involves a modest number of routines that,
because the grain is robust, allow some slack or play. The crop will take some
abuse. Raspberry growers, because successful cultivation of their crop is complex
and the fruit is delicate, must be adaptive, nimble and exceptionally attentive. Suc-
cessful raspberry growing requires, in other words, a substantial stock of local
knowledge and experience.