RUSSIA’S HARVEST IN 1933

Evening Star, Issue 21709, 2 May 1934, Page 14

RUSSIA’S HARVEST IN 1933

WHAT WAS THE REAL YIELD? EXPERT'S EXPLANATION Considerable amazement was aroused among foreign students of the Russian agricultural situation by the publication about the end of last year of official figures purporting to show that the Soviet Union in 1933 had reaped the largest crop in Russian history (writes the Moscow correspondent' of the ‘ Observer’). While the 1933 crop was evidently better than that of 1932, especially in Ukraina, it seemed remarkable that a record harvest (the official figure for the chief grain crops was stated as 89,800,000 tons, as against 69,870,000 tons in 1932 and 80,100,000 tons in 1913, which was the best pre-war year) could have followed immediately after disastrous and widespread hunger in such important grain-producing regions as Ukraina, the North Caucasus, and parts of the Volga Valley. Another peculiar feature of the allegedly record crop was the continuance of the system of bread cards, limiting the amount of bread that may be bought at moderate fixed prices to two pounds a day for manual workers and one pound a day for office employees in Moscow and large industrial centres, with smaller allotments, in some cases, in provincial towns. It seemed a mathematical puzzle why the Soviet Union, which supplied _ its population with bread without rationing restrictions on crops that were officially estimated as ranging from 72,000,00 tons to 76,000,000 tons between 1925 and 1928 should be obliged to maintain rationing limitations and to bake bread of very far from normal whiteness when the crop' had reached a total of almost 90,000,000 tons. EXPORT QUESTION. Exports do not supply the answers to this puzzle, because there have been no very large shipments of grain from Russia to foreign countries during the present season; indeed, the present policy of national agricultural selfsufficiency pursued by many countries would seem to make it doubtful whether Russia can ever regain her pre-war place in the world grain trade. An article published in 1 Izvestia ’ by Mr N. Ossinsky, head of the Central Statistical Department, which prepares the figures of grain yield, throws some light on the puzzling questions involved in the claims of a record harvest and also reveals the highly original methods of Soviet statistical computation. According to Ossinsky the task of determining the yields of the main grain crops was entrusted to a central State Commission last July. This commission' recognised three different definitions of harvest yield—the “ biological yield,” i.e., the estimate of the crop oh the fields, the “ granary yield,” the amount which reaches the granaries, and the “ normal yield,” which represents the collection from each acre, minus unavoidable technical losses. The crux of the harvest estimate lies in the fixing of “ the normal economic yield,” which, according to Ossinsky, was used as the basis for determining the crop figures. For some reason which he does not divulge the commission fixed this “ normal economic yield ” at 10 per cent, less than “the biological yield.” He adduces no proof that this deduction of 10 per cent, adequately represented the admittedly heavy losses that always take place during the Russian harvest season, confining himself to such vague statements as: — The main mass of material wa.s made up of the subjective estimates of regional, agricultural bodies and of the inter-regional State Commissions, which were the corrected estimates of the farms themselvs ... In general, the yield was defined according to mass subjective estimates, corrected by estimates of the “ biological yield ” and compared with statistical, agrqtechnical, organisational, economical, meteorological, and other materials which could clear up, define, or correct these estimates. AN ADMISSION. Out of this welter of words one highly significant admission emerges. Mr Ossinsky states that “ threshing data minimised the yield, and only in a few regions was the operations so well carried out that the estimate of ‘ biological yield ’ and the amount produced by threshing were within 20 per cent,, if not within 10 per cent, of each other. In most cases the threshing proved to be from 30 to 40 to 50 per cent, lower than the estimated ‘biological crop.’ ” , In the light of this it would seem quite evident that the alleged crop of 89,800,000 tons represents rather a subjective flight of fancy on the part of Mr Ossinsky and his colleagues, than a solid demonstrable mathematical reality. Not only is there nothing in the way of statistical scientific proof that a flat 10 per cent, cut from a more or less arbitrarily estimated “ biological crop ” represents the actual harvest which was realised, but the test of the threshing reveals an actual yield far below the “ normal economic yield ” that served as the basis for the harvest figures. The continued stringency reflected in bread rationing would have been quite inexplicable if the Soviet Union had really reajied the largest crop in its history. It is altogether understandable in the light of Mr Ossinsky’s revelation of the extraordinary methods that were used in computing the harvest yield. t