Personal Subsidiary Small Holding of a Collective Farmer, a specific type of personal property in the USSR which includes small ancillary buildings (such as sheds), livestock, poultry, bee-hives, vegetable gardens, orchards and agricultural implements, all of which are on a plot of land allotted to him by the collective farm. The size of the personal plot of land and the legal quota of privately-owned livestock are determined by the collective farm charter. The personal plot cannot be given to other persons or worked with the aid of hired labour. Subsidiary small holdings are needed because of the inadequate level to which the productive forces have developed. Social production and the rural retail network cannot yet completely meet the demands of the rural population for farm products. A large part of the farm products come from subsidiary small holdings. Furthermore, the level of social production and public services that has been reached in rural areas means that some of the population groups (many women, pensioners and adolescents) are now able to spend time working exclusively or predominantly on their small plots. Collective farmers and other categories of the rural population work on their plots during their free time. Subsidiary small holdings, being a relatively large sphere of work, are an important source of additional income for collective farmers. They primarily meet the needs of the owners and, as well, provide the urban population with agricultural products. Collective and state farms are the chief suppliers of produce, as they are the most advanced, mechanised and largest, and the personal subsidiary small holdings depend upon them completely. Collective farms provide their members with most of their livestock, grazing land, hay and fodder as well as young plants; they help with the tilling and transporting the produce, etc. Social production, which is the principal area in which the collective farmers apply their labour and principal source of income, increasingly determines their standard of living and allround development. Therefore, one should neither underestimate nor overestimate the significance of the subsidiary small holdings, as this can have a detrimental effect on social production. The Constitution of the USSR proclaims: "The state and collective farms provide assistance to citizens in working their small holdings.” At the same time, it obliges citizens to "make rational use of the land allotted to them”. Since the personal subsidiary small holdings develop within the system of socialist relations of production and depend wholly on social production, they are not and cannot become a type of 270 private property (see Ownership). Today the basic means of developing personal subsidiary small holdings are as follows: forging stronger ties with social production, with the latter playing a dominant role; improving the supply of all necessary material resources and technical means; offering regular agricultural, zootechnical and veterinary aid to those who possess subsidiary holdings; facilitating and regulating the sales of excess produce raised on the personal subsidiary small holdings. The expansion and increasing profitability of social production and providing the rural population with all necessary consumer goods and services form the economic basis for the gradual elimination of personal subsidiary small holdings in the future.