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Herding policy
Herding Policy refers to an agricultural policy implemented in the 1970s in communist Albania under the rule of Albania’s dictator, Enver Hoxha. The main idea of the policy was that the state had to collect ungulates from the country’s farmers in order to take control of the agricultural production. Consequently, ungulates no longer comprised a form of private property. The policy was carried out in light of the Party’s self-reliance goal.

Ideology and history
In the 1970s, after Enver Hoxha had officially broken all relations with the Soviet Union and later on with China, “self-reliance” became a maxim in socialist Albania. For the country, self-reliance was both an aim and a strategy towards certain goals. The Communist Party was seeking to further increase its control over the army and the economy. The latter was mainly done by means of the Herding policy accompanied by the several limitations placed on private property. As a result of the Herding (collection of live stock), restrictions on free agricultural activity were so strict that villagers could not even own chickens. Therefore, any parallelism between the economic reality in Albania and the notion of a free market was abolished. The implementation of this policy happened not long after the Party had declared state-reliance to be an official state policy. That is the main reason why many experts and critics deem herding policy to be both a means to and a result of the isolationist ideology of Albania’s leader at that time, Enver Hoxha. For the next decade, the implementation of the policy was even more severe, as Albania demonstrated the notion of isolationism and self-reliance. The logic behind was that the country had “learned from bitter experience”. Consequently, this was not a mere ideal but a necessity.

Propaganda
Propaganda booklets and other texts issued by the state strongly backed the policy. However, the herding policy manifestation was part of a larger-scale campaign, through which the dictator tried to implement the self-reliance idea in the brains of his people. The official textbook on socialist political economy referred to self-reliance as a necessity driven by internal forces and practiced on all levels of the economy. It imposed a policy of savings to mal-management of human capital, energy, financial resources and/or raw materials and in turn it called for energies’ focus on developing the country’s own R&D, and technology.

Consequences for Albania
Herding policy was a major policy, which transformed the relations between the consumer and the producer. Though implemented by the Ministry of Agriculture, the decision was made by the Political Bureau, which was led by Enver Hoxha. In a recent famous interview given to a well-known Albanian newspaper, the minister of agriculture at that time, has declared that the Ministry she led was merely putting the policy into practice, was not involved into decision-making, and could do nothing to reverse the verdict. The collection of live stock following the implementation of the herding policy did a lot of harm to Albania’s farming, animal race, and most importantly, transformed the way transactions between the producer and the consumer in the village were conducted. The biggest transformation was that the average villager evolved from a self-sufficient producer into a consumer of agricultural and farming goods. Before the policy was implemented, villagers produced a total of 12500 tons of meat. After the policy, this figure fell to 1500 tons. According to experts, this resulted in higher prices. Proponents of the policy argued that the cattle would be treated in better conditions, thus improving the race; women would not have to work under hard conditions while looking after the cattle; and, the hygiene in the Albanian village would improve, becoming comparable to that in the cities. Everywhere else in the world the average villager is a producer of farm goods. In Communist Albania he became a mere consumer and left the village, migrating to the capital city, Tirana. Private property was abolished when state took over the farms and the latters’ production. As a result, both competition and production efficiency were tragically harmed. The farming cooperatives that were assigned the collected animals stocks had their own production programs, which they no longer shared with each other. As a consequence, production levels decreased. The market was shocked by these changes and other sectors of the economy were also deeply affected.