new regulations encouraged co-operatives to buy most forms of light machinery. By the end of the year, the 2557 existing agricultural co-operatives had purchased over 1000 light tractors. In March 1958, Khrushchev suggested that machine stations had outlived their usefulness, and they were soon abolished. More purchasing of machinery was allowed the following year, and in 1961, a number of machine stations were allowed to sell off their obsolete machines. Furthermore, the machine stations in Turkeve and Székesfehérvár were converted into repair shops. Out of 235 machine stations in use in 1961, only 63 were open in 1964 and by the end of the decade, only a few remained in poor areas. Most of the stations were transformed into repair shops to service the machinery quickly being acquired by the co-operatives. The new independent machine ownership would later spawn further demands by the collective farmers. Household plots and sharecropping Another shift that resulted from the Agrarian Theses was a new willingness on the part of Party to accept household plots belonging to members of co-operative farms. The acceptance of household plots grew primarily out of necessity; the infrastructure required to shelter livestock co-operatively could simply not be built quickly enough. The government adopted the common-sense solution of allowing members to keep animals on their household plots. The solution was a good fit. The farmers enjoyed the benefits of keeping their own animals (including milk, eggs, even calves and piglets) and the government avoided the unnecessary slaughter of animals that would have resulted from strict enforcement. Although the household plots had long existed, the idea of household stock-breeding was not approved of by everyone. In 1959, a report to the Political Committee worried that in some areas, local farm leaders continued to oppose the creation of household plots and made life difficult for those private owners. Government attempts push for tolerance of their measures stressed the “transitional” nature of the situation. In the summer of 1960, Lajos Fehér, Deputy Prime Minister, insisted that "...[h]ousehold farming is an integral complementary part of cooperative farming ... It will be needed so long as the economic activity of the co-operative ... has not reached a high enough level for collective production to take over the supply . . . In many places the transitional measures are being branded in a sectarian manner as 'capitalist tendencies' or regarded as some sort of 'sin or act