Russians face grave shortage of meat, milk

Press, 24 October 1980, Page 6

Russians face grave shortage of meat, milk

NZPA-Reuter Moscow] The prospect of severe! meat shortages in the Soviet! Union next year loom large' after the disclosure yesterday of a grain harvest this year 20 per cent down on the planned target. Western agricultural experts said this year’s grain crop of 181 million tonnes calculated from figures! issued in the Kremlin yesterday seemed certain to] spell further shortages ofi, meat and milk for the Soviet] public in 19SI. Soviet cattle' are fed largely on grain. The Kremlin had for nine months dismissed as ineffectual the United States embargo on extra grain sales., to the Soviet Union imposedj, by Washington following the , Soviet intervention in Agfha->' nistan. News of the disappointing; I harvest also coincided with!' the signing in Peking of a; four-year contract for the' sale of at least 24 million tonnes of American grain to China the Soviet Union’s * Communist arch-rival. j Western farm experts suggested that Moscow might’ find it difficult to buy oni. the world market to make" up the shortfall and might] • be obliged to draw on their "reserves already thought to. be depleted from last year’s’ 1 poor crop. " Even if Washington was!j in the near future to change;, jits mind and lift the em-i| bargo, its contract with: J. China might mean it haslj little grain to spare, the ex-1 £ perts said. ' t If severe shortages do; v bite. Kremlin leaders are likely to have recourse in the c short-term, only to exhortations for patriotic self- t denial to the public with the t suggestion that things will jj get better in the near future. The harvest figure formed c part of a bleak set of stat-l c istics issued to a Kremlin; j audience that included Presi-jt dent Leonid Brezhnev and’d almost the entire Politburo with the notable exception t of the ailing Primo Minister b (Mr Alexei Kosygin). p The State planning com- v mittee chairman (Mr Nikolai g Baibakov) gave the bad p news about the grain har- 1

.vest in a complicated formu- • lation unlikely to be under- ' stood by the average Soviet i citizen, a technique used in t .previous years when the 1 I crop has been poor. ; i He said that grain produc- J i tion over the present five- ’ year plan period which ends I in December was 12 per ' cent higher than during the ; previous five years from • 1971 to 1975. *, f The implication apparent I ;only from the pages of the » i hard-to-find Soviet statistical ; yearbook was. that this « year’s crop would be only 1 180.9 million tonnes. This compares with a planned ‘ target of 235 million tonnes. ; The expected growth in ( industrial output next year f would be 4.1 per cent’the ’ lowest target set in any an- £ nual plan since World War 11. The rise in national income — roughly equivalent to gross national product — ; would be 3.8 per cent. * Mr Baibakov said - output ’ of crude oil and gas condensate next year would rise • to 610 million tonnes from .* this year’s target of 606 mil- . lion. > Western experts in Mos- J cow said this modest increase confirmed that the years of vast expansion of the Soviet oil extraction, in- ■» dustry were now over. They commented .that the ‘ target backed up predictions J. by the United States Central ■>» Intelligence Agency that Soviet oil production, the big- ;« gest in the world, would ■ peak at the beginning of the 1980 s and then decline. V,