This chapter demonstrates how independent initiatives such as appropriations by local authorities were pursued to deal with food crises, but instead may have exacerbated them. This problem was caused mainly by officials in Kyiv Oblast continuing with this policy when they did not need to. From 1948, central pressure eased on food collections across the Ukrainian countryside. This reduced the need for continuing self-supply at the local level. Continuing to keep appropriated land and refusing to assist farms in this period when their successful reconstruction was more feasible than before imperilled the farms and the broader localities of which they were part long after the crisis in worker food allocations had passed.