On arrival at the villages to which they had been assigned, evacuees were required to write brief autobiographical essays. The essay's content, particularly with regard to the subject's activity during the Khmer Republic regime, was used to determine their fate. Military officers and those occupying elite professional roles were usually sent for reeducation, which in practice meant immediate execution or confinement in a labour camp. Those with specialist technical skills often found themselves sent back to cities to restart production in factories which had been interrupted by the takeover. The remaining displaced urban population ("new people"), as part of the regime's drive to increase food production, were placed into agricultural communes alongside the peasant "base people" or "old people". The latter's holdings were collectivised. Cambodians were expected to produce three tons of rice per hectare, whereas before the Khmer Rouge era the average was one ton per hectare.