Collectivization in the Soviet Union was a policy pursued under Stalin, between 1928 and 1940, to consolidate individual land and labour into collective farms (, kolkhoz, plural kolkhozy). The Soviet leadership was confident that the replacement of individual peasant farms by kolkhozy would immediately increase food supplies for the urban population, the supply of raw materials for processing industry, and agricultural exports generally. Collectivization was thus regarded as the solution to the crisis in agricultural distribution (mainly in grain deliveries) that had developed since 1927 and was becoming more acute as the Soviet Union pressed ahead with its ambitious industrialization program.