 In 1960, the approximately 690 VEGs had under cultivation approximately 6.3 percent of the available agricultural land in the GDR.However, in the course of the general concentration and specialisation in agriculture, by 1980 their number had fallen to 385.As with the LPGs, so with the VEGs, in the late 1960s, a politically motivated separation of animal husbandry from arable farming was instituted.