How far were Mao’s agricultural policies responsible for the scale of the great famine in China, 1958-65?

Mao introduced collectivisation in 1956, two years before the beginning of the great famine. It lasted between the years of 1958 and 1961, where millions of peasants and industrial worker died due to a severe lack of food. Most historians argue that the scale of the famine was due to the agricultural reforms introduced by Mao in the Great Leap Forward, but Mao blamed other factors. Collectivisation involved the peasants joining together to farm collectively rather than individually. They then had to share the food produced with the rest of the community, as opposed to just their families, which had been the way the previous, traditional system worked. This, in theory, was a good idea; if the peasants worked together they could share knowledge and potentially grow more food. However, they didn’t like the policy as it meant, regardless of how much they grew individually, they would only get a set amount, and it was never enough to feed the whole family. Mao believed that many peasants were growing more food than necessary and keeping some for themselves, however this was proved not to be the case; production rate had fallen from 200million in 1958 to 143.5million in 1960, proving that they were innocent; Mao simply didn’t trust the peasants, believing they were ‘inherently capitalist’ and were against being a communist state. The policy of collectivisation contributed hugely to the scale of the famine; the peasants resented the change as they didn’t have enough land to farm their crops, as well as the fact that the authorities believed that they needed to be ‘strictly controlled and directed.’ This attitude towards them caused the peasants to be reluctant to hand over their crops to the state. Lysenkoism was a huge factor that contributed to the scale of