However, despite immense land resources, extensive machinery and chemical industries, and a large rural work force, Soviet agriculture was relatively unproductive, hampered in many areas by the climate (only 10 percent of the Soviet Union's land was arable), and poor worker productivity since the collectivization in the 1930s.
A view of poor performance of Soviet collective farms is provided by two historians, M. Heller and A. Nekich ("Utopia in Power, History of the Soviet Union from 1917 to Present," Simon & Schuster, Inc., 1986).