Today the Autonomous Province of Kosovo and Metohia is still regarded a^
an extremely agricultural region. The intensive social and economical transformation
of this region has started not until New Yugoslavia had come into being. This
region entered the phase of faster transformation particularly after 1956 when
the Federation formed special funds for the development of less developed areas.
The author in this article considers the present agrarian structure and the
consequences of economical development on rural life in Kosovo and Metohia. At
the beginning, he explicates the basic characteristics of private landownership
structure, then discusses the changes of the socio-economical structure of rural
population, gives the main data about market-production of individual farms and
at the end deals with the trends in formation and distribution of farms’income.
The AP Kosovo and Metohia is the only region in Yugoslavia where during
the period 1953 till 1961, the number of total agricultural popultaion rose (16,5%).
This was due to the high natural increase of popultaion which is more than twice
higher in comparison with the rate of natural increase for the whole country. In
the meantime intensive economical development caused considerable migration
tendencies of agricultural population to towns and industrial centers under construction.
Also the number of employed peasants in nonagricultural activities increased.
In 1961 there were more than 50.000 peasants in full time employment
out of agriculture
