SPRING PLANTING

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIII, Issue 56, 7 March 1942, Page 7

SPRING PLANTING

LIMITLESS SPACES

Russian People Will Make Up

For Lost Ukraine

Rriti* om>\a7 \Vi:vlf>«. RUGBY. March 6

Rec. 1 p.m

A huge army of many million? of Russians (men. women and children) are waging one of the vastest and most dramatic battles for a harvest that the world has ever seen. Preparations are well in hand, according to a Moscow message, for the spring planting of grain, potatoes, vegetables and sugar beet in Russia's limitless spaces. M. Moyseyeff. chief of the Planning Department of the Commissariat of Agriculture, declared that Russia's 240.000 collective farms in 1941 planted 237.223.000.000 acres of grain. It is true that the major part of the Ukraine is still in German hands, but the Ukraine for the past two years has occupied only a second place as Russia's granary, with Russia proper claiming ,0 per cent of the other crops.

"If we fulfil this year's programme," he said, "of a" 5 per cent increase in sowing and 10 per cent increase in production in the land still under Soviet control, we shall almost completely compensate for the loss of the yield of 2,471,000 acres of the Ukraine. The occupation of White Russia and the Baltic Provinces had no adverse results on the food situation, as these republics had always consumed more than they produced.

"Our expansion programme embraces primarily the Volga, the Urals and Siberia, which for the past 13 years have increased the sown area by 22,124,000 acres. Central Asia is becoming one of the major food areas, with wheat, fruit and sugar beet, and is competing-'with the republics in the planting of cotton. Irrigation plans are being carried out in every corner of the Uzbek, Tadjik and Kirghiz Republics (in Asia), with workers, teachers and housewives volunteering by the thousands to dig canals. For instance. 15.000 men and women started to work last week on a canal in ncrth Tashkent. Central Asia, that will water 123.554 acres."