Collected Works of V. I. Lenin - Vol. 13 - From Marx to Mao

AGRARIAN QUESTION AND “CRITICS OF MARX”211Groups offarms1893 1898Per cent Per centincrease distributionNumber of Number of or decrease of total pigsFarms Pigs Farms Pigs Farms Pigs 1893 189850 head andover 844 79,230 1,487 135,999 76.2 71.7 9.6 11.615 to 49 20,602 350,277 30,852 554,979 48.2 58.4 42.3 47.54 to 14 38,357 211,868 50,668 282,642 32.1 33.4 25.5 24.21 to 3 108,820 187,756 108,544 194,873 0.3 3.8 22.6 16.7Total 168,623 829,131 191,551 1,168,493 13.6 40.9 100.0 100.0These figures clearly show that a rapid concentrationof livestock farming is taking place. The larger the farm,the more it gained from the “progress” of livestock farming.The big farms increased their number of livestock by 71.7per cent; the medium-big farms increased theirs by 58.4per cent; the medium-small farms by 33.4 per cent; and thesmall farms only by 3.8 per cent. The increase in wealthoccurred mainly among the small “upper” minority. Thetotal increase of pigs during the five years was 339,000;of these 261,000, or, more than three-fourths, were accountedfor by the big and medium-big farms, numbering 32,000(out of a total of 266,000-277,000 farms!). Small-scale productionin livestock farming of this type is being oustedby large-scale production: during the five years there wasan increase in the share of the big farms (from 9.6 per centto 11.6 per cent) and that of the medium-big farms (from42.3 per cent to 47.5 per cent); whereas that of the mediumsmallfarms diminished (from 25.5 per cent to 24.2 per cent),and that of the small farms diminished still more (from 22.6per cent to 16.7 per cent).If instead of the bare figures of area we could get statisticsof agricultural farming expressing the scale of productionas precisely as the figures of the number of livestock