Revisiting Group Farming in a Post-socialist Economy: The Case of Romania

In the 1990s, Romania decollectivised its agriculture under the Law on Agricultural Land Resources (Law 18/1991). Like many former socialist countries which had undertaken farm collectivization under socialism on a large scale, members of former collective farms who were deemed the ‘rightful owners’ were to be given back individual land titles, and, to the extent possible, within the old collective farm. As Sabates-Wheeler (2005: 18) argues, Romania's land law ‘partially attempted to recreate the property regime that existed prior to collectivization