Abstract
This study examines the impact of the agricultural cooperative currently operating in Csanálos (Urziceni), a Swabian settlement in Szatmár (Satu Mare), on the local economy and society. Agricultural cooperatives played an important role at the beginning of the process of agrarian transformation after the regime change in Romania. Established on a voluntary basis, the successor organizations to the socialist agricultural collectives were able to offset the impoverishment brought about by re-peasantization or forced peasantization during the long transition period, provided a stable financial basis for communities in the difficult periods following the regime change, and, often taking over state responsibilities, represented social cooperation and trust-based social localism. On the other hand, they took advantage of their monopolistic position to hinder the emergence of individual and family farmers. The risk-averse, self-reliant economic model of the cooperatives evokes the self-sufficient organization of peasant farms. Cooperatives can thus be seen as a very specific form of post-socialist post-peasant production system.
In this study, I examine the history and functioning of an agricultural cooperative in a Swabian settlement in Szatmár (Satu Mare),1 as well as the impact of the cooperative on the local economy and society. It presents the partial results of two large-scale research projects, mainly in the form of data on the history and functioning of the cooperative.
Ethnic considerations emerged very late in economic anthropological research — only in the last third of last century (Sárkány 2016). However, in recent decades the relationship between ethnicity and economy has become a central issue, owing perhaps primarily to the work of Thomas Hylland Eriksen. The differing economic performances of various ethnic groups is regarded by several authors of economic anthropological case studies as being a consequence of specific value systems and the associated community norms. According to these authors, the economic adaptability of the individual ethnic groups is largely determined by the collective mental capital of their members and their perceptions of work, economic norms, money, etc. In such analyses, ethnicity is conceptualized as a form of social capital. While this approach has opened up promising avenues for further research into the relationship between ethnicity and economy, it also carries the risk of confining the scope of the analysis to the exploration of the ethnic field. Ethnic practices, or practices that appear to be ethnic, must be examined in the context of wider socioeconomic processes. Analyses that focus on ethnicity inevitably run the risk of ethnic exceptionalism (Sárkány 2016), according to which other members of the majority society, who are markedly different from the selected group, are represented merely as staffage. This raises significant uncertainties concerning the ethnic distinctness of economic practices. To address this issue, the concept of “mixed embeddedness” (Kloosterman et al. 1999), first used by economists, has been introduced into economic anthropology, mainly in the context of minority–majority relations, broadening the interpretive framework and raising it several levels. In examining the economic practices of a given community, an analysis of external relationships and contexts is just as important as the exploration of intra-group processes. In contemporary economic anthropological approaches, therefore, ethnicity is treated as an entity that is constantly redefined in the context of competition for economic resources, power, or various social entitlements (Barth 1969; Szabó 2013). In this interpretation, ethnicity may, on the one hand, serve as the foundation for economic practices, while at the same time economic relations and consumption patterns may determine the relevant aspects of ethnic classifications, as well as the delineation and strength of ethnic boundaries (Stewart 1994; Berta 2010). Due to the high degree of assimilation2 in the Swabian settlements in Satu Mare, the identification of ethnic boundaries would be a rather difficult and, in my opinion, unnecessary task, thus the focus is on distinguishing and analyzing ethnically loaded economic practices. Attempts to examine the relationship between economy and ethnicity have been undertaken not only in terms of theories of capital. Several researchers have approached the issue from the perspectives of mentality, ethnic solidarity, individual well-being, and consensus discourses concerning the common good, focusing on how local politics uses ethnicity to strengthen those local ties that yield economic profit, among other things (Schwarz 2021; Szabó 2013). This idea is aligned with one of the principal questions of my broader research — namely, whether the prevailing public discourse and my empirical experience so far, according to which Swabian villages are economically and socially more prosperous than the surrounding Hungarian and Romanian villages, has any scientific relevance, and, if so, which factors contribute to this phenomenon.
In other words, the Swabian communities in Satu Mare demonstrated greater resilience than their non-Swabian neighbors and were able to respond more flexibly to the economic challenges following the regime change. Resilience is “the measure of the persistence of systems and of their ability to absorb change and disturbance and still maintain the same relationships between populations or state variables” (Holling 1973:14), while social resilience is “the ability of communities to withstand external shocks to their social infrastructure” (Adger 2000:361). This defensive capacity is what Holling calls territorial capital potential, which, he argues, allows for continued adaptation and “determines the range of future options possible” (Holling 2001:394). Resilience is therefore almost always about achieving a restructured but stable system, rather than about repairing damage suffered and restoring an original state (Faragó 2017:20).
The principal question in my study is whether there are points of intersection between ethnicity and resilience that can be interpreted as markers — that is, agents — in the case of Csanálos (Urziceni). I highlight two such examples in my analysis: the local manifestation of regional capital potential in the organization of the agricultural cooperative, and, to a lesser extent, the institution of seasonal labor in Germany.
Resilience, in my reading, always denotes a relationship; it is a situational and dynamic concept, and, as such, time is its most important determinant. In this sense, we cannot speak of resilient or non-resilient groups, since external and internal dynamics create tensions in every community. What matters is the speed and the nature of the response to external impacts. In my view, the state of the local economy, the level of employment, or the level of economic development have a significant impact on social resilience. The availability of economic resources, infrastructure, and employment opportunities, and the quality of the social safety net, can all affect the resilience and adaptability of a society or community. However, I would emphasize population as the most important factor. Social resilience can never be considered independently of population size. A given group can compensate for the decline in the population only to a certain extent. Accordingly, the concept of migration cannot be avoided in a study of the resilience of a settlement — I therefore discuss it in greater detail in what follows.
The concept of social embeddedness, introduced by Károly Polányi (Polányi 2004), and the theory of “weak ties”3 (Granovetter 1985:481), appear particularly appropriate when investigating the factors that influence the resilience of Swabian communities. I therefore rely primarily on these theories to understand the operation and the functions of the cooperatives and to analyze their social character.
The usefulness of considering social embeddedness in Transylvanian agricultural research has been demonstrated by the findings of the research on agricultural innovation conducted in the Szeklerland under the direction of Zoltán A. Bíró (Biró – Magyar 2018). The researchers typically examined the activities, social engagement, and narrative self-reflections of individual entrepreneurs, thus, in the case of the cooperative forms that I have studied, it is only to the patterns of embeddedness and discursive forms described in their analyses to which I am able to make a comparative connection (Biró 2019:178–179).
Besides social embeddedness, the examination of the economic impact of connections with Germany is an important aspect of the question. To date, there has been no analysis of the de-traditionalization that took place as a result of the socialist planned economy, or of the conditions that emerged as a consequence of capitalist individualization following the regime change in the region. Consciousness of German origins4 latent in the Swabian communities of Satu Mare during the communist period became the basis for various heritagization processes after the regime change, while also representing economic potential. Those who emigrated to Germany between 1960 and 1989 played an important role in the revival of ethnic awareness as well as in economic recovery. It is largely as a result of their efforts that the Swabians in Satu Mare transformed themselves from an almost invisible ethnic group into a national minority capable of asserting its interests and, at the same time, into a virtual community with strong internal cohesion. The question of the cultural heritage of the Swabians of Satu Mare, and of supporting the preservation of Swabian traditions, has been, and continues to be, central for both the Hungarian and Romanian political elites of the county, not least in the hope of the economic connections with Germany accessible via the Swabian community.
The field
Csanálos (Urziceni) is situated 8 km northwest of Nagykároly (Carei), near the Hungarian–Romanian border. Among its 1,447 inhabitants, 805 declared themselves to be Hungarians, 346 Germans, and 154 Romanians.5 The village has around 2,000 ha of arable land and borders a relatively large area of forest, vineyards, and sandy soil, covering a total area of 1,000 ha, 185 ha of which is sandy pastureland. Agriculture and animal husbandry have always played an important role in the economy of the settlement (Figs 1 and 2). Most of the arable land is black chernozem, although the proportion of sandy soils is not insignificant. Traditionally, the main crop was wheat, with rye and oats cultivated to a lesser extent. Sunflowers, maize, and sugar beet were also significant crops, while the hemp processing plant in the neighboring village served as an important driver of hemp production. The main plants in the crop rotation were clover, lucerne, and vetch. In addition, potatoes, cabbages, melons, beans, swedes, and other crops were cultivated, primarily in household gardens. Intensive farming became widespread very early, and by the 1940s, there were already farmers who were able to purchase tractors, seed drills, and milk separators. The byproducts of agriculture were also utilized — buttermilk from milk separation was used in pig breeding, for example. Local farmers achieved outstanding results regionally in terms of horse, cattle, pig, and poultry breeding. We have accurate information from as early as 1742 concerning the stocks of large animals owned by the settlement's 86 farmers, who owned 299 horses, 86 oxen, and 244 cows, while in addition 10 serfs each had one cow. Prior to the First World War, horse breeding was significant at national level, and Hungarian and Transylvanian breeds such as the Nonius, reared in state studs, were crossed locally with English and Arabian half-breds to produce hardy draught horses. Cattle breeding was likewise of a high standard: a stock of large, broad, strong-boned breeding and draught cattle was maintained, based on the renowned Hungarian pedigree herd at the estate of Lajos Károlyi in Erdőd (Ardud). Prior to the introduction of socialist production methods, the pastures, which were several times bigger than present-day pastures, were grazed by three or four herds, a substantial herd of horses, and a large herd of pigs (Bura 2001:45). In 1910, the land was redistributed and the rotation system was abolished. The land was reallocated, this time centrally. Since there were considerable differences in terms of the fertility of the plots, a large number of lawsuits almost inevitably followed (Bura 2001:42).
View of a street in Csanálos (Urziceni), with the Roman Catholic Church of the Discovery of the Holy Cross, 2020. (Photo by the author)
Citation: Acta Ethnographica Hungarica 2025; 10.1556/022.2024.00025
View of a street in Csanálos (Urziceni), 2020. (Photo by the author)
Citation: Acta Ethnographica Hungarica 2025; 10.1556/022.2024.00025
The first cooperatives: TOZ-type agricultural cooperative farms
“The TOZs began after the Second World War, in the 1950s. These were the, how to put it, întovărășire tovărășească [in Romanian – L. Sz.] — comradely cooperatives [work cooperatives – L. Sz.]. And all of them were given to people who were party members. They were founded by people who had nothing, who had no land, who were servants, who were farmhands working for the bigger farmers, and of course their eyes were opened and they said ‘let’s go, we’ll show them.’ And then this land was taken away from the bigger farmers, from Count Károlyi, and M.B., the landowner here. Their land was taken away, and these people were given land, because these big estates were nationalized. The land was put into temporary ownership; their names were entered on the paper, not in the land register, just on paper. You’re part of the TOZ with that much land. Then they took the good land: the TOZs were all created where the best land was. They took 7 or 8 ha from my family, too, because the land was at the end of the village… where the best land was; they took it, and they moved us from there to the sand dunes. And there they gave us a hemp plán [an allocated amount, or plan – L. Sz.] and a sugar beet plan — there were plans back then. So that’s how the TOZs came about. And these people, these landless people, were given land and were given a piece of paper with it. And with that piece of paper, when the collective was formed in ’59–60, with that paper they got to join the collective. And they kept these applications in the archives, they were all there in the records, and these landless people, these nobodies, joined, some of them with our land, my family’s land, my godmother’s land. People who’d had no land at all but who’d been given back three and a half acres of first-class land.” (Man, 77 years old)
The collectives
“I only remember because I always went with him, my grandfather, because he’d always hold my hand when I was a kid. He took me everywhere. Especially when they got together in the collective to plow, oh my, he was so angry he went red in the face — but there was nothing to be done, that’s how it was.” (Man, 76 years old)
Following the socialist transformation of local production systems, not only did the look of the settlement's land change but grain production was industrialized. This involved the establishment of giant plots and the leveling of some of the sand dunes on the outskirts of the settlement using heavy machinery. The land thus obtained was brought into production, and in a similar way, part of the pastures and meadowlands were plowed. At the same time, fruit production was intensified and livestock farming was centralized, with the establishment of cattle farms, horse stables, pig farms, and chicken farms. In addition, labor was restructured, with peasants being forced to work in brigades. “We had everything. Horses were the fashion, because all the work was done with horses in the collective at first. There were two horses in a team, or four horses for heavy work; if you were plowing, you'd use four horses, or two cows and two calves. In Csanálos (Urziceni), they plowed with teams of four horses. …The cow complex was here in Csanálos (Urziceni), because the pasture belonged to the settlement, there, on the sandy area between Erdő and Csanálos (Urziceni), there was a big pasture, and that's where the herd grazed, the herd with the foals right at the front. Then out on the sandy area in Erdő there were sheep, five hundred sheep. There were four flocks, each with a separate sheepfold built for it. There was a really famous chicken farm back then. We produced day-old chicks there; I've still got a hatchery next door. There was a hatchery with a capacity of five or ten thousand. The whole neighborhood, even folks from Satu Mare, would come here for their chicks. Some came with baskets and others with carts to buy fifty, a hundred, two hundred chicks, and off they'd go. It paid really well. We were able to use all the eggs from the chicken farm for one thing, the price doubled, and besides, it produced valuable fertilizer for agriculture. All the sheep and cows produced manure. We put it out on the platforma9 to ferment, and when winter was over and the cows went out to graze, then we put fifty or so teams in place, with a cart with a rubber strip on the front, and they'd bring out the manure. For a month all we did was carry manure out to the fields, and we manured a hundred hectares. There were times we could manure two or three hundred hectares. We didn't know anything about artificial fertilizers back then, only manure, and where there was manure, the yields were good. Where there was no manure, they weren't. We manured the orchard, 400 ha, every two or three years, and we manured each tree separately with horse muck or sheep muck.” (Man, 81 years old)
Before the regime change in 1989, the collective farm was the main employer in the village. Thanks to the high quality of the chernozem (black soil) in the area around Nagykároly (Carei) the collective farm was extremely successful and profitable.
The collective also provided a number of services to help members who had lost their livelihood due to the economic and social challenges of the socialist transformation. The transformation of village society and of the way that family and work were organized, and the associated difficulties, were addressed by the creation of new institutions. In the early 1960s, bakeries were opened, childcare facilities were organized, and construction brigades helped with building work, etc. “The collective was the first10 in the area, the Csanálos (Urziceni) collective farm, because it was my wife's grandfather that founded the first collective here in the village. It was still a pure Swabian village at the time, and the collective functioned very well. The soil was good, the people worked heroically, you might say. They were real peasants. They came from Germany and they brought their expertise with them. Here, they started to cultivate the land that belonged to Count Károlyi. That's why they were brought here from Germany, to work on the count's lands…. In the collective, we began working with horses, two or four horses. There was a plow [in the public space in front of the cooperative – L. Sz.] that we used to plow the first hectares. We used a hoe for weeding.” (Man, 81 years old)
The vast majority of the older population worked locally, mostly in the various units of the collective. Members of the younger generations were employed in the industrial plants in nearby towns, primarily in Nagykároly (Carei) and Szatmárnémeti (Satu Mare). They formed a significant stratum of commuting worker-peasants.11 The men worked mainly in the Nagykároly (Carei) unit of the Unio heavy machinery factory, the oil factory and sugar factory, also in Nagykároly (Carei), and the hemp factories in Börvely (Berveni) and Nagykároly (Carei), while the women worked in the Filatura Textile Factory. From this stratum of worker-peasants emerged the agri-entrepreneurs who started out in the 1990s and who became stable local economic players from the 2000s.
However, another form of migration contributed to the accelerating decline in the population of the settlements from the 1970s. The emigration of Satu Mare Swabians to Germany, which peaked in 1991–92, led to the emergence of a peculiar social and economic environment. The proportion of the active population had already decreased significantly before the regime change. The collective responded to the shortage of labor by increasing mechanization, as far as its financial resources allowed. As a further consequence of emigration to Germany, the population that remained, partly through its contacts with Germany, had financial resources at the time of the regime change (Szilágyi 2021:198) that enabled them to avoid the compromises that were so common elsewhere during the restructuring (Peti–Szabó 2006).
Before 1989, the Romanian agricultural sector was dominated by three main forms of production organization: state farms, agricultural collectives, and, to a lesser extent, private farms in the predominantly mountainous areas where there was no possibility for profitable agricultural production. Of these three, the agricultural reforms that followed the change of regime had the most radical impact on the collectives. So much so, that the most definitive process in the first decade of Romanian agriculture following the change of regime was de-collectivization and the need to confront the economic and social problems it had created. One important outcome of de-collectivization from the perspective of the present study was the emergence of successor organizations to the collectives – the cooperatives.
In analyses by Transylvanian Hungarian researchers, the period of de-collectivization that followed the regime change is generally associated with negative terms, such as refeudalization, repeasantization, and forced peasantization — summarizing a process by which people returned to the techniques and practices of pre-collectivization (Szabó 2002:27; Csata 2006:5; Kiss 2005:50). The closure of industrial plants that had enjoyed special favor in the planned economy but that were unviable under market conditions led to increased urban–rural mobility, resulting in the repopulation of the countryside that had previously been depopulated precisely because of forced industrialization. However, farming out of necessity, and using pre-collectivization techniques, tools, and practices, did not provide a real escape from poverty.
Tables 1 and 212 below highlight the rates of this mobility and its productivity indicators.
The proportion of agricultural employment in Romania
| 1990 | 1995 | 2000 |
| 28.2% | 40.3% | 42.8% |
The percentage of agriculture in the Romanian GDP
| 1990 | 1995 | 2000 |
| about 25%<0} | 20.7% | 12.6% |
Hungarian ethnographic research in Transylvania — for reasons that are understandable from a historical academic perspective — has focused mainly on the study of small-scale and family farms (Peti – Szabó 2006), while various forms of cooperatives have largely been analyzed as opportunities to be exploited and as unutilized opportunities (Tóth 1995), or as unsuccessful experiments (Kinda 2006).
Following the regime change, several Western analysts postulated that the disintegration of the large and notoriously inefficient collective farms would lead to land reform and prompt farmers to gravitate towards what were — at least theoretically (see Binswanger et al. 1993; Lin 1988; Schmitt 1991) — more productive small-scale private farms (Frydman – Rapaczynski 1994). Surprisingly, and contrary to their expectations, various forms of group or cooperative farming proved to be extraordinarily persistent in the region (Lerman et al. 1998; Meurs 1999). In fact, these cooperatives sometimes proved to be more efficient than individual producers. In Romania, where land was transferred into individual ownership after de-collectivization, it is estimated that 43% of agricultural land had been voluntarily returned to cooperative organizations by 1993 (Brooks – Meurs 1994:22). In contrast with the literature, in which the efficiency of cooperative agricultural production is questioned, the dominance of cooperatives may indicate that they were perceived as a preferable form of certain land-related work, such as land preparation, tillage, and harvesting (Carter 1987; Putterman 1985). “So, what happens is that everywhere, here as well, there are valleys and holes where the water accumulates. These were all left with the cooperative. I mean with the people who're part of the cooperative. Well, it's a disadvantage, too, unless it's shared; I mean, while there are big farms, the small ones lose. The small loss, produced by the lands around M., let's say, amounts to 35–40 ares13 out of the 50 ha. Each year a big rain comes, which stands on the land for two weeks or a week, and the maize or whatever's growing on it dies. Then we've sacrificed it, you might say, for the sake of peace.” (Man, 77 years old)
When we read about the radical socialist transformation of the economy, the trauma of the elimination of the peasantry, and the relegation of agricultural production to collective farms, we think of a lengthy period that sealed the fate of entire generations, a completed period that led to a definitive standstill. The time that has passed since the regime change — which is now longer than the period spent by the Satu Mare Swabians in the collective — is generally characterized as a time burdened by the continuous quest for a way (out) and by the frequently changing pressure to adapt. In the examined settlement, a cooperative form of agriculture has been continuously dominant now for sixty years. However, this does not mean that no changes have taken place. In Romania, as in other countries, many forms of cooperative farming emerged after the regime change.14
The transformation of collectives into cooperatives was regulated by Law 36 of April 30, 1991, on Agricultural Cooperatives and Other Cooperative Forms in Agriculture.15 The law contains regulations on two types of cooperatives: a) organizations with legal status (which I refer to as formal or legal cooperatives); and b) family cooperatives, without formal statutes or legal basis. Since the latter category does not differ substantially from the group of unregulated individual and family farms, and since my research concerns cooperatives belonging to the first type, I focus on formal associations with legal personality, and the following conclusions refer exclusively to them.
According to a survey carried out by the OECD, there were 4,054 agricultural cooperatives in Romania in 1993, regulated by Law 1991/36, covering a total area of 1,812,000 ha. The cooperatives comprised an average of 185 families, while their total workforce was around 750,000.16 In 1996, the Peasants' Party government sought to create a legal environment that would discourage cooperative formations and promote the strengthening of Western-style, market-based family farms by drastically reducing the agricultural subsidies available to cooperatives. As members were required to pay for the various operations of the agricultural cooperatives, the termination of the state subsidies that were designed to alleviate these costs made it a far more attractive alternative for many to make a land lease contract with the agricultural enterprises that were beginning to proliferate at the time. In most cases, this meant significantly less income for the landowner but in return involved no additional costs, which proved to be a decisive factor in a period of severe capital shortage. Most agricultural cooperatives were dissolved in the period between 1997 and 200017 (Hatos 2006:208).
The Recolta Agricultural Cooperative
“Our maize hasn't stayed in Romania for five years. It's all taken to Constanța, then off by ship. Same with our wheat. The customers are these huge American companies, they've got ships, barges on the Danube, I've no idea how many, it's ADM [Archer Daniels Midland – L. Sz.]. So, they come, and they pay a good price. From here, they've still got to get it to Constanța. I don't get the same price as they do in Brăila or Galați; they get a higher price for the produce because they're closer to Constanța. We're already at a disadvantage here, compared to the southerners. Customers are able to pay proportionally less.” (Man, 55 years old)
On the one hand, the cooperatives integrate Swabian landowners into global food chains, while on the other hand, they support small-scale farming (actually household farming) for those who, for various reasons — a lack of resources of their own, or the primacy and exclusivity of other income-generating activities — would not otherwise have the opportunity. The vast majority of the grain produced is sold by the cooperatives on the global grain market, while the amount made available to members provides the basis for local food production and consumption. The members of the cooperatives — that is, the landowners — continue to raise livestock (pigs, poultry) for their own consumption and for local sale, although to an increasingly limited extent. The animals are fed from the fodder produced by the cooperative. Local farmers and landowners thus typically engage in two different types of farming by dividing the land available to them. The inner areas (typically 20 to 50 ares) belonging to the houses serve as both a geographical and a subsistence buffer at the same time. They are a geographical buffer in the sense that they form a transitional area between the interior of the village and the large agricultural areas outside the village. And they are an economic or subsistence buffer in the sense that such areas are generally utilized as kitchen gardens, where vegetables and other plants are cultivated for household consumption. The members entrust their land to the cooperative, but usually keep a small piece for their own use, which is cultivated on an occasional basis, using the available labor force. This may be their own or their family's manual labor, although nowadays it is mainly a combination of paid manual and mechanical labor. One distinctive feature of the Csanálos (Urziceni) cooperative is that it also carries out the necessary labor-intensive services for its members even on these small plots, despite the fact that they are extremely resource intensive compared to large-scale industrial farming operations.
“So, when the big news came that Ceaușescu and Elena had been executed and the collective farm had to be liquidated, along came the big propagandists, saying that the CAP had to be liquidated. They came from Szatmár (Satu Mate) and Károly (Carei). Well, these Swabians took it seriously. They set about liquidating. When news came that the collective had to be liquidated, people were delighted; they were happy to get their land back and to be able to farm independently. Everybody set to and the orchard was divided up and given back to its previous owners.”
“Did everyone get the back the same land…?”
“Where they’d owned land before.” (Man, 82 years old)
“So, there was this group of people here in the village, functionaries, postal workers, teachers, the cooperative president, who had normal jobs: They said, ‘Wait a minute, guys, what's going to happen if we give all the land away? Who'll provide for us then? Those who don't have land? We need to form a cooperative; those who have land can join it with their land, the cooperative will buy machines and cultivate it, and we'll divide the crops among ourselves, according to what we harvest. Right after the revolution. So there were five or six of these tough guys, who knew how to manage the village because they were reputable people, and they formed the core of this cooperative.” (Man, 82 years old)
Agromec began its activities on a somewhat smaller area of about 150 ha. According to people's recollections, incompetent management, disagreements among members, and financial difficulties quickly led to the closure of the cooperative and its integration into Recolta. Some members left and started their own businesses, and therefore purchased some of the machinery. Other machinery belonging to Agromec was transferred to Recolta. The cooperative, which now farmed a larger area, rapidly increased the amount of land it cultivated even further. Soon after the regime change and the closure of industrial units, a significant number of those who had earlier been forced to start farming liquidated their farms and transferred their land to the cooperative. Smallholders were typically first, followed later by larger farmers who were no longer able to cultivate their land due to their age and a lack of machinery. “Well, we got to the point where these smallholders, who'd set about showing us what we should be doing on 5 or 10 ha, saying they'd learned it from their fathers, they soon came to grief because they couldn't keep up with us. We had a bit of money, we quickly bought a modern machine that meant we could work in a different way, and we achieved results in a different way. We were completely successful, and then they saw they couldn't compete with us and they started joining, with 5 ha, 10 ha, year after year, people even brought in 50 or 100 ha at the beginning. When they couldn't work by themselves any longer…” (Man, 82 years old)
As I see it, the importance of cooperatives lies in creating and maintaining freedom of choice when it comes to land use. In terms of the income diversification strategies among Swabian landowners in Satu Mare (Borbély 2021:201), the income paid by the cooperative was always present as a basis, or even just as a potential source of revenue. This had a significant and positive impact on the mobility of the Swabians. Since the Swabian families in Satu Mare realized an important part of their income from seasonal labor migration19 to Germany, they freed themselves from the tasks associated with cultivating the land they owned.
By the mid-2000s, the present-day structure of the cooperative had been established: it has approximately 600 members who farm 1,350 ha of arable land. This growth can be attributed to a combination of factors: the uncompetitive nature of peasant farming prompted increasing numbers of farmers to abandon the cultivation of their lands, although the aging of the farmers and migration processes also contributed to the trend. “Those who couldn't do it gave it up. Anyone who was young after the regime change and worked in a factory, as a turner or whatever, they didn't join the cooperative. They went home, and eventually they bought a tractor. And then they started. But the old people and others got their land back; the youngsters, those who went to the West and came back, had no idea what to do with the land, they became members of the cooperative, they all got together.” (Man, 82 years old)
“We had yields that I can only laugh at now. With 1,800 kilos, I was one of the top five in Satu Mare and Maramures counties. I was even awarded a diploma. Now we’ve reached the point where we have 8 to 10 tons of wheat per hectare, even 13. And back then I was top with 1,800 kilos. With my 56 tons of sugar beet I got the Erou al Muncii Socialiste20 diploma. Back then, 4,000 or 5,000 kilos of grain was really good.”
“What’s the average maize yield now?”
“Now we get over 13 tons of maize, dried, sztász [to specification – L. Sz.]. That’s how much we’ve improved. And now with this much maize in Nagykároly (Carei) or Szatmár (Satu Mare) County I’m still in first or second place. Look at that! [He points to his certificate — L. Sz.]” (Man, 82 years old)
Shares may be held by persons other than the original members and their descendants, who have not contributed land to the cooperative, nor are there any restrictions on trading with shares. The cooperative makes exclusively land lease agreements with new members. The dividend paid by the cooperative (at a rate of RON 2,500 per hectare per year in 2022)21 comprises products or money, as preferred, from the harvested crop calculated per hectare (but exclusively from the major crops: wheat, maize, sunflowers, etc.), as well as oil and sugar.22 Further dividends are paid to shareholders from annual profits.23 If a member requests their dividend in cash, the cooperative sells the crop in the name of that member and pays them the cash. Since the purchase price for grain is lowest after the harvest and subsequently rises steadily, and since cooperatives can store grain for longer periods and wait until prices peak, members always receive a higher income than individual farmers who have to sell their crops immediately after harvest. Although the dividend is not an extraordinary amount, for the majority of members it covers the entire annual cost of basic foodstuffs (bread, oil, flour, and sugar) and can therefore be considered a significant income.
In contrast to other cooperatives in the region encountered during the research, the Csanálos (Urziceni) cooperative does not engage in any social functions but is exclusively involved in agricultural activities, mainly large-scale grain production and, to a lesser extent, work with agricultural machinery for members and non-members in the local community on a wage basis. Although it operates formally as a limited company, in reality it is run as a family business, with the first manager's son succeeding his father as director. The directors are major shareholders and paid employees at the same time. However, the company-like organization also manifests some non-market-oriented, almost social features. “Without the land subsidy, it wouldn't be profitable. But it's not paid for plots below 30 ares. We have plots of 5, 10, or 15 ares. We don't get subsidies for those. We've got a lot of plots, you see, more than 180, because when people came, wanting to join the cooperative, because they were old or because someone had a garden behind their barn that they couldn't work anymore, then he, my father that is, took everybody in. Okay, we'll do the work, you come and collect the money and that was that. That's why we cultivate plots like this. In one case, the land is a clearing in the forest. We planted rape in it last year, for example. I don't even know yet what we'll plant in it this year. We cultivate it, although it doesn't yield as much, of course, and there's wildlife damage and stuff. But the cooperative swallows it, because the members… The village and the members are the most important thing, of course. We need to satisfy everyone.” (Man, 55 years old)
The cooperative's machinery is modern and, as a result of improvements and investments, has managed to keep pace with technological innovations — albeit with “Swabian rationality.” They have held onto auxiliary, supplementary machinery whose performance has a negligible impact on productivity or cost-effectiveness (Figs 3 and 4). The management of the cooperative is aware of the growing ecological criticism of industrial agricultural production practices, such as soil pollution and the disproportionately large ecological footprint (in terms of carbon emissions).24 However, they have made no attempt to change production practices in response to such criticisms. This is justified on the grounds of profitability — that is, the need to pay dividends to the members.
Mobile sprayer in operation, 2023 (Photo by the author)
Citation: Acta Ethnographica Hungarica 2025; 10.1556/022.2024.00025
Old and new. A 40-year-old but perfectly functional tank is still in use today, 2023 (Photo by the author)
Citation: Acta Ethnographica Hungarica 2025; 10.1556/022.2024.00025
The functioning of the cooperative is nowadays driven mainly by the inertia inherent in its organizational form. Although this organizational form is now obsolete, or at least less effective,25 its one undeniably positive aspect is that it has so far been able to resist outside, and even foreign, appropriation. The cooperative's charter includes a particularly detailed provision aimed at safeguarding the land in Csanálos (Urziceni) and ensuring its inalienability: “The cooperative has been established in such a way that the founders who contributed certain monies could not sell it to an outsider. They could sell their shares to one another, but they couldn't sell to a stranger unless the whole thing was discontinued. Then it can be sold. Because they could have sold, maybe to I.,26 who could have bought 50 percent. It's written in the charter. If it's discontinued, then everyone can take out their share.” (Man, 55 years old)
The cooperative and EU funds
Like all the cooperatives around Nagykároly (Carei), the Csanálos (Urziceni) cooperative has only very rarely applied for tenders. Attempts have been made, but due to negative experiences and the inevitability of generalized corruption within the tendering system, they no longer participate in tenders. “We did a SAPARD program in 2006, to the tune of 300, 000 euros. We used the money to buy a tractor, a seeder, a combine harvester, and a sprayer. So, that was a 300,000 euro project. At the time, how SAPARD worked was that you had to pay the 300,000 euros, then the European Union would pay back half of it. We got back the 150,000 euros within three months, if I remember correctly. Now, since we didn't have 300,000 euros to pay out, and didn't even have 150,000, we went to the bank, borrowed 300,000 euros for five years, then paid the 150,000 euros difference for five years. We did the math, and the 150,000 we gained went almost entirely to the bank in the form of interest. So we were the ones who gained least from the EU subsidy. The bank won, the seller won, but we, the ones who'd applied for the tender, I think we barely broke even.” (Man, 55 years old)
The operational structure of the cooperative also complicates the submission of tenders, as significant decisions require the agreement of the majority of members, and obtaining this can be a time-consuming process. With the exception of the tender mentioned above, agricultural machinery has been acquired by leasing over the years, using solely the cooperative's resources, and even then with the approval of the board of directors.
Accession to the EU has been seen not as an opportunity but rather as an attack on the established production practices that had guaranteed independence. In the common market, the cooperative's competitiveness has declined, and in certain years its revenues have also decreased, as a consequence of the agricultural support systems27 that differ in each member state. “So, we can't escape the fact that the EU is controlling us with this subsidy business. Yes, it's manipulating us. This little APIA28 process. Grow soya now, and you'll get a bit of money, then everybody grows soya. And we depend on it, we've become dependent on it. This isn't the agriculture I used to enjoy, the way we used to go and work the land, sow this here now and that there; that's not how it is any longer. The subsidy is just enough to keep you afloat, to stop you going into the red. It's because of the subsidy that you might even end up in profit. But without the subsidy, you're already in the red from the start.” (Man, 55 years old)
Table 3 summarizes the economic indicators of the cooperative. With more than 30 full-time employees, it is not only the largest employer in the settlement but also the company with the largest capital and turnover. Unfortunately, the accounts for the first 10 years are not available, although even the incomplete data series shows that the cooperative has been able to steadily increase its capital and ensure a profitable operation.
The main financial indicators of the cooperative from 1999 to 2021
| Year | Net profit | Income | Expenditure | Share capital | Number of employees |
| 2021 | 2,557,167 | 13,287,601 | 10,530,055 | 10,519,804 | 29 |
| 2020 | 325,986 | 8,628,077 | 8,302,091 | 7,962,637 | 30 |
| 2019 | 1,262,297 | 9,638,738 | 8,362,469 | 7,636,651 | 30 |
| 2018 | 219,139 | 8,532,861 | 8,313,722 | 6,374,354 | 30 |
| 2017 | 543,639 | 8,312,921 | 7,689,725 | 6,155,215 | 30 |
| 2016 | 19,411 | 7,535,693 | 7,516,282 | 5,611,576 | 31 |
| 2015 | 170,848 | 7,595,628 | 7,424,535 | 5,592,165 | 32 |
| 2014 | 633,081 | 6,887,044 | 6,202,279 | 5,421,317 | 32 |
| 2013 | 207,563 | 6,975,714 | 6,728,149 | 4,787,679 | 32 |
| 2012 | 1,082,190 | 7,470,010 | 6,201,098 | 4,580,115 | 31 |
| 2011 | 1,667,038 | 7,440,842 | 5,448,759 | 3,497,926 | 31 |
| 2010 | 493,627 | 6,205,339 | 5,679,579 | 1,830,887 | 31 |
| 2009 | 53,198 | 5,219,538 | 5,152,743 | 1,337,260 | 32 |
| 2008 | 180,277 | 5,316,943 | 5,098,768 | 1,284,062 | 33 |
| 2007 | 128,382 | 4,237,622 | 4,081,312 | 1,103,785 | 35 |
| 2006 | 998 | 3,433,085 | 3,427,074 | 975,403 | 39 |
| 2004 | 106,808 | 3,086,386 | 2,948,356 | 980,761 | 42 |
| 2003 | 215,447 | 2,760,731 | 2,506,508 | 873,953 | 41 |
| 2002 | 65,462 | 2,073,651 | 1,984,519 | 658,505 | 40 |
| 2001 | 298,527 | 1,727,333 | 1,349,151 | 603,985 | 41 |
| 2000 | 181,263 | 1,095,745 | 874,514 | 319,408 | 42 |
| 1999 | 3,423 | 620,358 | 615,793 | 143,391 | 38 |
Source: topfirme.com (accessed September 23, 2023).
Concluding thoughts
Paradoxically, from the perspective of evolutionary resilience, the Csanálos (Urziceni) cooperative can be regarded as an economically and socially successful organization precisely because of its unchanged character. It has not only provided a stable financial basis for the community in the difficult periods following the regime change but has often assumed state functions and represented social cooperation and a localism based on trust. The success of the cooperative is also the success of the community that maintains it, although its continuing success has required a combination of factors: an aging population, a shortage of labor at the time of the regime change, the Swabian mentality and work ethic, the availability of capital via contacts in Germany, and a skilled and adaptable management. As I see it, the main advantage of cooperatives lies in the fact that they have effectively resisted the advent of foreign agricultural investors, and that the land has remained in the ownership of the members of the community.
The statement made in the analysis of forms of cooperative agriculture in Romania, according to which the richer a settlement is the more likely it is that individual farming will be chosen over cooperative farming, since the necessary start-up capital may be available (Hatos 2006:238), does not apply to the examined settlement, since it was already a very rich settlement at the time of the regime change but decided in favor of cooperative farming and the cooperative format. At this stage in my research, I can offer only a speculative explanation as to why: The remaining local population was still sufficiently large for it to continue functioning as a community, although as far as agriculture was concerned, they were forced to create and operate cooperative systems that differed from the general model in Romania. The cooperative applied for tenders only in exceptional cases. Due to unfavorable experiences with the tendering system, such as the inevitability of corruption, they rely mostly on self-financing. The representatives of the cooperative experienced EU accession not as an opportunity but rather as an attack on the established production practices that had guaranteed their independence. It may be no exaggeration to see this risk-avoiding, exclusively self-reliant economic model as a self-sufficient, peasant-style farming structure.
Acknowledgements
The study was funded by project ELKH No. 57004, Social and Cultural Resilience in the Carpathian Basin; and NRDI research project FK 143759, Economy and Ethnicity. Agricultural Associations as Factors of Social and Economic Resilience in Swabian Villages in Satu Mare Region from the Regime Change to the Present.
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Szilágyi Levente Gábor has been a research fellow at the HUN-REN RCH Institute of Ethnology, Budapest, since 2011. He earned a PhD from Babeș-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, in 2014. His research interests include borderlands, cross-border relations, rural transformation, and the post-socialist transformation of agriculture.
The German ethnic group known as the Szatmár or Satu Mare Swabians (German: Sathmarer Schwaben) arrived in several waves from Baden-Württemberg to the area around Nagykároly (Carei) and Szatmárnémeti (Satu Mare) in the first half of the nineteenth century (Baumgartner 2012). These two settlements are located in the northwestern part of Romania, in Satu Mare County.
Hungarians, Romanians, Germans (Swabians), Roma, and to a lesser extent Rusyns, Slovaks, and Jews have been living together in the Satu Mare area for centuries. The Swabians in Satu Mare have only experienced significant assimilation from the Hungarian side. For more on the historical reasons for this, see Baumgartner 2012.
The concept of “weak ties” refers to the fact that social ties have varying degrees of strength. Besides strong ties (e.g., family members, close friends), there are also “weak ties,” which are looser, less intense relationships (e.g., acquaintances, old classmates). Granovetter's theory is based on the notion that weak ties provide far greater access to information and resources that are outside the individual's narrower, more immediate network. This information may include job opportunities, business offers, innovations, or other social opportunities (Granovetter 1985).
The socialist ideal of society has questioned the meaning of ethnicity and sought to minimize its significance. At the same time, the anti-minority sentiment that emerged after the nationalistic and national-communist turn of the Romanian Communist Party provides clear proof of the falsehood of this idea.
According to the 2011 census, including the data for Csanáloserdő (Urziceni-Pădure), which belongs to Csanálos (Urziceni). (The denominational and church-related statistics for Transylvania at settlement level can be found at: https://nepszamlalas.adatbank.ro/index.php?keres=csan%E1los&megye=0&x=0&y=0&pg=telepuleslista /accessed November13, 2023/).
The terms “collective” and “collective farm” used in the text refer uniformly to the socialist farming cooperatives.
TOZ: Tovarishcheestvo po obshestvennoi Obrabotke Zemli – Association for the Joint Cultivation of the Land. Workers' cooperatives differed from collective farms in that the members did not establish a common farm but only carried out or commissioned certain work processes jointly.
A word of Russian origin that was used by the communist authorities to stigmatize wealthy peasant farmers, who were declared class enemies.
An area built by collective farms for the aging of stable manure, typically with a concrete surface.
In the sense of “the most outstanding.”
Among the many interpretations of the social category of the worker-peasant, I consider the approach of Ștefan Dorondel and Stelu Șerban to be the most applicable to the local conditions. It goes beyond the picture offered by Szelényi and Kostello, according to whom worker-peasants were both part-time agricultural workers and undereducated industrial workers forced by the communist authorities into urban industrial units (see Szelényi – Kostello 1996). They supplement this with a lack of market orientation (for more detail, see Szabó 2013; Lovas Kiss 2006), which they explain as being due to the dependence of the families' farming activities on the socialist cooperatives (Dorondel – Șerban 2014:20).
1 are = 100 m2 = 0.01 ha.
We have no accurate data for the percentage of land in Romania farmed by cooperatives. Statistical estimates range between 12% and 22%. The main reason for the uncertainty is that the forms of cooperative farming have extremely diverse organizational backgrounds, ranging from agricultural companies operating as legal entities under lease contracts, to informal associations of individual farmers.
On the transformation of the Romanian agricultural sector following the regime change and the way this transformation played out in the Swabian villages of Satu Mare, see Szilágyi 2021.
OECD Agricultural Policy and Trade Developments in Romania in 1993–1994, OECD Paris, 1993.
Unfortunately, there are no available reports on the number of agricultural cooperatives still operating under Law 1991/36 in Romania. The fact that the number is not negligible is indicated by the amendments drafted in 2019, 2020, and 2023.
Meaning “harvest,” “harvested crop.”
As a result of emigration to Germany, which began in the 1960s and essentially ended in the early 1990s, the Swabian families who remained in the area, almost without exception, have an extensive network of contacts in Germany. Already from the mid-1990s, when it was still difficult for Romanian citizens to travel to Western Europe, many people travelled to Germany for seasonal work by obtaining the necessary visas for “family visits.” After Romania's accession to the European Union in 2007, this practice became even more widespread.
Hero of Socialist Labor.
By way of comparison, the gross minimum wage in Romania in 2022 was RON 2,550.
Sugar beet was for a long time a dominant and highly profitable crop in the cooperatives' portfolio, until the closure of the sugar factory in Nagykároly (Carei) in 2006. The sugar still claimed as dividends is purchased by the cooperative for its members.
Based on the year-end balance sheet, the board of directors (in many cases the manager of the cooperative) decides on the realized profit. Some of it is used for investments and improvements, and the rest is distributed among the members.
On the one hand, accurate records are kept of the quantities of fertilizers, chemicals, and fuel used. Every year, 2,600 kg of fertilizers and other plant and soil protection products are applied to 1,300 ha of cultivated land, while 80,000 to 100,000 L of gas oil are burned. This represents a significant environmental impact, although it is significantly smaller than ever before, thanks to more efficient machinery, more effective application, and increasingly stringent EU regulations on the use of chemicals and fertilizers. “Now, for example, in this pandemic, we had this training on how we need a license to use chemicals because we're a company. The EU and chemicals. So there was an exam and a three-day course and all that bullshit. We did it. While a private person can use whatever they want. They can buy the most toxic substances from Ukraine and use them. Who checks what they're doing? Is it fair? Of course it isn't. But we're not expecting fairness. So we're taking care of the mediu [the environment] while they can spray it any which way they want it… But don't get me wrong, I'm not saying this out of envy… I'm only saying it because if we're protecting the mediu, then come and protect it here in Csanálos. Let's all protect it. Right?!” (Man, 55 years old)
An enterprise operating under a land lease system enters into multi-annual (generally ten-year) contracts with landowners. During this period, which is “protected” by a forfeit, entrepreneurs can plan freely and securely and are not only able to choose their crops freely but can shape their investments accordingly. This type of contract does not exist for cooperatives; members can decide to withdraw their land from the cooperative at any time, and there is permanent fluctuation. Individual farmers, as well as the Schöntal Innovative Agricultural Cooperative, are also trying to entice members so as to have access to more arable land.
A major agricultural entrepreneur in Szatmár (Satu Mare) County, owner of a seed and fertilizer distribution company. It has been actively involved in the bankruptcy of several cooperatives in the area [including in Kalmánd (Cămin) and Börvely (Berveni)] and as such is a feared but unavoidable player in the agricultural sector in the area, being the exclusive distributor of certain fertilizers. The way in which the input companies operate bears strong similarities to the usury that resulted in the insecurity of masses of small and medium-sized landowners in Hungary after the emancipation of the serfs, but also in the first decades of the twentieth century (Bak 2014). The following three passages are separated by a period of more than one hundred years: (1) “The systematic goal of usury is to gradually gain control over the debtor's entire economic existence. Often the business relationship between the usurer and the debtor begins with quite legitimate transactions, although sometimes the business becomes protracted, and when the obligation becomes increasingly daunting, the debtor is forced to transfer his crops to the creditor at a price well below their value, or to make further postponements by means of sales, rentals, etc., in which case they are still subject to excessive exploitation. The complete dependence into which the debtor gradually falls regularly ends with the loss of their entire property.” (Balogh 1905); (2) “There's Agrotex in Nagykároly (Carei), then I. began in Terem [Mezőterem] (Tiream), then Hatvan [Érhatvan] (Hotoan), Vezend (Vezendiu), Kálmánd (Cămin), Börvely (Berveni), one after the other. And what did they do? They provided the input [seeds, chemicals, fertilizer, etc. – L. Sz.] to the farmer, but he couldn't pay for it because they gave it to him at list price. Believe me, I buy 40%–50% cheaper than they do. Because I pay on time, and I can bargain. So they're stuck with them because they can't pay on time.” (Man, 77 years old); (3) “It can happen at any time that an Arab or someone comes along and sorts out Nagykároly (Carei) in ten minutes flat. We're moaning about how much to share, and he comes along and sorts it. Anyway, Promat and Agrotex, they give you fertilizer, chemicals, everything. But if you don't play it right and you get into debt, you're in danger. They say: ‘You can't pay? No problem, no one needs to get hurt,’ then they'll take over the company. That's what Promat does, they're from Tasnád (Tășnad), they're a rough lot. Agrotex less so. They've taken over a lot of companies. Companies, cooperatives, private companies. They're not farming well, or they bust something for whatever reason and find themselves in debt one year, the next year again, the third year again, then in the fourth year, how can you pay off your debts? So, here's the thing: you have to do it seriously, work hard, get the maximum out of it. Oh, and God also has a say as to whether it rains, and how much. There's nothing we can do about that, but we can do the rest.” (Man, 55 years old) The first quotation was written by criminal law professor and minister of justice Jenő Balogh, who was pressing for the abolition of the usury that was a burden on farmers, exploring the possibility to do so as a legislator. The other two quotations are the views of the head of a Swabian village cooperative in Szatmár (Satu Mare) concerning the vulnerability of farmers, including cooperatives, to input companies.
The EU average for an area-based agricultural subsidy is EUR 259 per hectare. In Romania, the basic subsidy is EUR 100, and with auxiliary support for young farmers (even when growing priority crops) a maximum of EUR 214 can be obtained. By way of comparison, the following average subsidies are available per hectare: Germany EUR 282, France EUR 289, Denmark EUR 307, the Netherlands EUR 373. https://agridata.ec.europa.eu/extensions/DashboardIndicators/FarmIncome.html?select=EU27_FLAG,1 (accessed September 22, 2023).
Agency for Payments and Intervention in Agriculture, an organization that provides land fund subsidies.
