The gov't took control of enough of the food supply and organized it so that people had to depend on the gov't to survive. I'm sure they left plenty of farms, but he was in a small village in a remote location and they didn't want anyone to be self-sufficient. It could have been that some of it was confiscated too, he told me that story years ago. I know he said they had regional commanders that were sort of like African war lords and thigns were not quite as centrally run as the head honchos would have liked. Maybe some areas had different rules.
