COMPUTER FARMS

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32406, 19 September 1970, Page 11

COMPUTER FARMS

From next year, a single computer will be used to run eight large state and collective farms in the Minsk area. Later it will become the management centre for all farms in the Minsk region. The Minsk computer farming project, which is one of seven to be set up in the immediate future, is based on a pilot, project in which a number of farms have taken part.

At one farm the computer cohtrolled the stock-raising section. At two others it controlled the disposal of all machines and tractors, Cost reductions achieved were between 8 and 12 per cent

In the new Minsk Farm Management Centre, responsibility will be taken for drafting long-term agricultural development plans, annual production and finance plans, calculations of the optimum doses of mineral fertilisers, establishment and employment of the machine and tractor fleet, analyses of production costs, labour input and so on.

The central office will be connected with 'the farm offices by telegraph, .telephone, photo-telegraph and radio communication lines. The farm offices (as well as their divisions) will, in turn, have reliable communications with the farms’ most important sectors: livestock farms, machine and tractor fleet, fuel and lubricant storage, etc.

All the local links of the system will be provided with mechanised . processing of information. The Pravda state farm will have its own mechanical calculation office.

A vast flow of managerial and economic information will be running via communication channels to the computation centre and back.— Novosti.