How did Lenin's economic policies affect agriculture?

1) One of the very first Bolshevik decrees was the Decree on Land. All land was taken from the Aristocracy and granted to the village soviets. This was designed to mollify the peasant supporters of the Socialist Revolutionary Party - the largest party in Russia. The peasants were able to hire labourers to help at harvest time.

2) As the Civil War erupted Lenin began the policy of War Communism. This was designed to feed the cities and the Red Army, but was disastrous for the peasants, as the Red Guards seized grain surpluses at gunpoint.

3) As the Bolsheviks began to win the Civil War, Lenin realised that the economy was ruined and needed a boost, so he began the New Economic Policy. This was a temporary measure, just until the economy recovered from the ravages of 7 years of war. Peasants were allowed to buy and sell on the open market. They were allowed to sell their surpluses, and to hire labourers.

4) The establishment of an agricultural state bank. This was designed to loan money to peasants to help them purchase industrial products and new machinery for their farms - as such it was also designed to help industry.

5) The establishment of state and collective farms. State farms were established on the former estates of the aristocracy, where no peasants had farmed before. Collective farms pooled resources like machinery and manpower, they were voluntarily entered into until the late 1920s. The purpose was both ideological - the Bolsheviks thought that collective forms of working and ownership were free from exploitation - and practical - the first collective farms were in areas of high crop yields, by farming together the peasants could keep costs down and productivity up.

See:

The Soviet Union 1917 - 1991 by Martin McCauley.