Agro-Industrial Association

The Agricultural Industry Association ( AIV for short ) was a form of organization in the GDR in which several agricultural and industrial companies were combined. The aim was a closed technological and organizational chain from production to processing or sales of agricultural products.

prehistory

Since the mid-1960s, the leadership of the GDR relied on the largest possible associations in its agricultural policy in order to achieve “industrial production” in agriculture. In this way, production and productivity reserves should be used to the maximum, production costs should be reduced and a uniform production level should be achieved within these cooperation chains. AIVs should ensure an economical use of the means of production through joint investments and enable a higher utilization of the potential workforce existing in their territory. For example, in 1965, as one of the pilot projects in Teterow, the cooperative association “Fleischschwein” was set up, in which a production chain from the stable to the retailer was organized under the responsibility of the municipal slaughterhouse. The eighth party congress of the SED in 1971 decreed specialization with the transition to large-scale industrial production.

structure

The first AIV was after the IX. SED party congress (1976) formed. In 1983 there were 14 AIVs, most of which also have an impact beyond the political and organizational boundaries (districts and districts). The central aim of the AIV's activities was to lower production costs through an overarching coordination of management and planning.

As a rule, the AIV comprised legally independent companies of different types of ownership. An AIV generally comprised 8–12 companies, of which mostly 4–6 LPG or VEG plant production , an agrochemical center , an improvement cooperative and - depending on the production facility - one or more processing companies. Industrial companies whose processing capacities far exceed the raw material production of an AIV (e.g. sugar factories or large mills) were not included in AIV. Even county businesses for agricultural machinery were not member businesses, as they overarching functions - were assigned - even outside the agro-industrial cooperation.

The AIV was a legally competent body, worked according to the principle of economic accounting and had a managerial function in relation to the cooperating companies and cooperatives . They sent representatives to the assembly of delegates, who in turn elected the AIV advisory board. It usually included: the head of the AIV and his deputy, the chief accountant, the party secretary of the AIV, who had their own party organization, the directors of the VEG and the chairmen of the LPG plant production. The director of the district operation for agricultural engineering took part in an advisory capacity. Resolutions had to be passed unanimously. For technical coordination, commissions could be formed for individual main products - usually for a limited period of time.

AIV examples

The largest AIV in the GDR was built in Friedland in the Neubrandenburg district . It comprised 23,000 hectares of arable land and 9,460 hectares of grassland. It was led by the “model tractor” Margarete Müller , who was also a member of the Central Committee of the SED and a candidate for the Politburo .

The end of the AIV

The merger of individual areas did not prove successful. The stability of production was hampered, among other things by multiple operational restructuring. Material and technical overstrains due to increased transport and energy consumption as well as the dissolution of social village structures had hardly been considered. The beginning of a change of course in the agricultural policy of the SED was evident in the request issued in 1978 to pay more attention to the modernization of existing stables. As a result, the exaggerated specialization and concentration efforts of the early 1970s were gradually withdrawn. The at the X. Party Congress of the SED (1981), the 3rd Central Committee Conference of the SED (1981) and the XII. Bauernkongress (1982) raised demands for an improved territorial organization of the farms, for the reduction of the fields and for a better cooperation of the animal and plant production companies in the "uniform reproduction process" as well as the construction freeze for the construction of new industrial plants and the general reduction of the number of new buildings Stable capacities to be aimed for at around 30% of the sizes proposed in 1974 are evidence of the efforts of the SED to at least correct the extreme excesses of concentration and specialization of the 1970s. By 1985 almost all AIV had been dissolved again.

See also

• Cooperative plant production department (abbreviated to KAP), special arable farms in the GDR.
• Kombinat Industrielle Mast (abbreviated KIM), type of operation in agriculture (especially animal production) in the GDR.

literature

• Karge, Wolf: Development of the rural region in northeast Germany between dictatorship and democracy. Northwest Mecklenburg district, Grevesmühlen 2011.
• Schmidt, Klaus: Agriculture in the GDR: VEG, LPG and cooperation - how they became, what they were, what became of them. Agrimedia, Clenze 2009, ISBN 3-86037-977-1 .
• Heinz, Michael: Of combine harvesters and model villages. Industrialization of GDR agriculture and the change in rural life using the example of the northern districts. Metropol, Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-940938-90-9 .
• Schier, Barbara: Everyday life in the "socialist" village. Merxleben and his LPG in the field of tension of the SED agricultural policy 1945–1990. Waxmann, Münster et al. 2001, ISBN 3-8309-1099-1 ( Munich contributions to folklore 30 = Munich university publications ).
• Schöne, Jens: Agriculture in the GDR 1945–1990. State Center for Civic Education Thuringia, Erfurt 2005, ISBN 3-931426-90-4 .