Concern Over Poor Soviet Harvest

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29734, 30 January 1962, Page 7

Concern Over Poor Soviet Harvest

A ZJh A ■ Neuter i.opyngnt)

MOSCOW, January 29.

The Soviet Party Central Committee has

ordered a complete review of agricultural difficulties at a special meeting on March 5 in the wake of a poor harvest which has left shelves short of good meat and other food.

The Soviet shortage was nowhere as severe as the famine that had been troubling China for three years, but agricultural production had become a major stumbling block in the Soviet effort to lift living standards to Western levels, the Associated

Press said. Even in Moscow, a favoured city, meat was scarce and the quality below normal. Reports came in of even greater meat shortages out in the provinces, and of food smuggling from Moscow citizens to families and friends in other parts of the country. Mr Khrushchev’s assurance that the Soviet Union would overtake the United States in agricultural production is still far from being fulfilled. Soviet figures for 1960 showed that the Soviet Union produced 133,000,000 tons of grain compared with 194.000,000 in the United States, and 1700,000 tons of meat compared with 17.900,000 tons, Mr Khrushchev himself will deliver the opening summary of the agricultural situation at the committee meeting on March 5 and

sources predict that, if it fol-

lows the pattern of the last two years, new heads will roll in the principal farming areas. The hard climate has contributed to some farm failures but Mr Khrushchev and many others insist farm management is at fault.

Challenge to Programme The failure of the farms to produce their anticipated increases has challenged the entire Soviet farm programme of creating large collective and State farms. These are faring much worse than the little private plots which individual farmers can operate after they finish work on the big collectives The official agricultural programme called for increasing the crop area by 4,000,000 acres. Carefully concealed figures this year have made it hard to get precise comparisons. After a forecast that public meat supplies would rise by 14 per cent., the Central Statistical Board said, in a single obscure sentence, that eggs and milk had increased but “purchases of meat were somewhat diminished.”