Ukraine Move For More Meat

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30593, 9 November 1964, Page 13

Ukraine Move For More Meat

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright) MOSCOW, November 8.

Collective fanners in the Ukraine will be allowed to keep cattle and have their private plots extended under new measures announced in Moscow.

Writing in “Pravda,” Mr Pyotr Shelest, the Ukranian Communist leader, said the party and Government had lifted “unwarranted limitations imposed several years ago on the private plots of collective farmers, factory and office workers.” Veteran Moscow observers cannot recall any specific announcement that private plots would be reduced or

private cattle forbidden, but they said there had been a tendency over the last four years to cut down peasants* possessions throughout the country.

The latest move applies only to the Ukraine, and there was no official indication that it might be extended to other republics, although some observers thought this likely. It was announced at the same time as the Ukraine's 1964 state grain purchases, which bring the total for the whole country well above the 1962 record.

Moscow observers thought the main purpose of the new move was a bid to raise the output of meat, which has fallen off seriously this year. Over the whole Soviet Union meat production in the first nine months of this

year was down 20 per cent on the same period last year. In the Ukraine it was down 26 per cent. Observers hesitated to connect the measure too closely with Mr Khrushchev’s departure from the Kremlin, though one interpretation offered was that the new leadership had taken the opportunity to reject an unsuccessful policy he had introduced.

Another suggestion was that it was a bid by the new Kremlin leaders to gain popularity among Ukrainian farmers. Mr Shelest said collective farms and local authorities had been given instructions to help peasants and workers buy cattle and fodder. Explaining the measure, he said the party had emphasised the need to attain

“correct combination of the interests of the collective farms with the personal interests of the collective farmers.”

Today’s harvest figures bring the total state purchases of grain from the three main grain producing republics to 65.3 million tons, as compared with the 1962 figure of 56.6 million tons for the whole country. Ukrainian fanners sold the state a total of 11.5 million tons this year, which compared with 9.7 million last year. The combined total for the Russian Federation and Kazakhstan was 53.8 million tons.

The 1964 figures contrast sharply with the disastrous harvest failures in some areas last year, which brought the total for the whole country to only 44.8 million tons.