During the Soviet era, the individual farmers were permitted to use approximately 3% of the land of the collective farms for private farming. These relatively small plots, only 3% of the cultivated land in the USSR produced some 35% of the foodstuffs throughout the Soviet era. The private plots were scattered throughout the Soviet Union, attached to the big collective farms. Soviet agriculture was constantly plagued with bad weather: droughts, floods, heat, cold, etc. These natural disasters were the reason why Soviet agriculture never once met the needs of the Soviet population.

An entire collective farm often produced less than the 3% private plots around it.

Less than each 3% plot or less than the plots in aggregate?

It is a simple thought that secrecy corrupts. It corrupts analysis. Two years before the Berlin Wall came down, the CIA formally estimated the per capita gross domestic product in East Germany to be higher than West Germany. In his memoir, George P. Shultz, Secretary of State, recalls in 1986 when then President Reagan and he were thinking that perhaps they might have some success with Mr. Gorbachev, Mr. Gates, then the Director of Intelligence, informed him, Mr. Secretary, `the Soviet Union is a despotism that works.'

http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/1994_cr/s940812-ia2.htm

The CIA (wrongly) thought the Soviet Union was humming along, but you knew better? LOL.