Brezhnev in low key over grain

Press, 12 November 1977, Page 14

Brezhnev in low key over grain

By

MICHAEL SIMMONS and RICHARD NORTON-

TAYLOR in the “Guardian.”

The most muted moments in the generally euphoric speech delivered by Mr Brezhnev to the world’s Communist leaders recently were those concerned with the Soviet Union’s agricultural prospects. Grain output this year, he said, was “far from being the best,” the country’s needs in terms of food requirements were growing, and not all the problems by any means had been solved.

Mr Brezhnev has good reason for circumspection. He knows as well as his sternest critics that it is all very well blaming the weather if the harvest is not good, as he and his colleagues and their predecessors have been wont to do, but he also knows — because he organised the event — that his own predecessor, the otherwise irrepressible Mr Khrushchev, was forced into an abrupt departure partly through allegedly abysmal failings on the farming front.

In addition, the turnover in Soviet Ministers of Agriculture has been high in recent years — and it was apparent failure in that portfolio that ended the once promising career of Dmitri Polyansky, previously at Mr Brezhnev’s side in the Politburo itself.

Certainly, Mr Brezhnev has tried hard with the farmers, and of necessity some of the biggest investments announced during his tenure as Party leader have been in agriculture. Nor has he been slow to go tub-thumping among the farmers, promising them more and better machinery and fertilisers but simultaneously demanding from them vastly increased efforts to meet consumer needs.

In many respects, the Brezhnev era may be remembered as the era when the consumer really mattered. Consumer goods, including food, have been given unprecedented priority and high targets set: but the producers have been unable to deliver the goods and the targets have manifestly not been met. With this in mind, as well as the Soviet peasants’ well-known resistance to change and the hugely cumbersome nature of Soviet bureaucracy in agriculture as in many other sectors, Mr Brezhnev can be said to have good reason to sleep uneasily at nights. Mr Brezhnev told a plenary session of the Communist Party Central Committee just a year ago that priority must be given to agriculture, if necessary at

the expense of other sectors of the economy. Outlining the Soviet Union’s new fiveyear plan, he said that about $U5221,000 millions had been allocated to develop agriculture for the period up to 1980, an increase of nearly a third over the previous five years.

Russia has concentrated on investment in farm machinery and fertilisers. But over the last year it has also been active on world markets to satisfy shortterm needs of its consumers, purchasing soya for animal feed from the United States, lamb and butter from New

Zealand, sugar and butter from the E.E.C. Mr Brezhnev announced recently that the Soviet Union had produced 15 millions tonnes of meat — well above the official target — although a heavy slaughtering programme now as a result of a shortage of feed grains would lead to a shortage of meat in the future: at present, Russians on average eat about 1281 b a year, half as much as the American average.

Ironically, the Soviet Union’s poor grain harvest of 194 million tonnes — 19

million tonnes below the target and below recent Western forecasts — coincides with the Carter Administration’s decision to cut the acreage for wheat production next year by 20 per cent after a run of bumper harvests in North America. Mr Robert Bergiand, the United States Secretary of Agriculture, has told American farmers that the Soviet shortfall could give a fillip to United States grain exports and stabilise world prices which have been slipping. He said that the Soviet Union might import up to

25 million tonnes of grain over the next 12 months, the bulk coming from the United States. He also admitted that the Government might change its plans to “set aside” feed grain plantings, but with world grain stocks at record levels Russia’s import needs should not have any dramatic effect on world prices or the world supply situation.

Reaction to Mr Brezhnev’s announcement also demonstrates that the world grain trade is dominated by the two superpowers — a fact which the E.E.C., and France in particular, resents.