COLLECTIVE FARMING

Greymouth Evening Star, 11 March 1932, Page 9

COLLECTIVE FARMING

AGRICULTURE UNDER SOVIET. 11l countries to-day are contemplating- the possible effect of a stimulated grain export from Russia under Soviet conditions upon the world economic situation within the 'next few years. Colonel Sir Thomas Montgomery Cuninghame contributes- an informative article on 1 the subject, under the title of ‘The Menace to. Russian Agriculture,’ to the ‘National Review'.’ The possibility of a vastly increased volume of Russian cereal output, he writes, has t two principal aspects—firstly, as tending to maintain the existing glut; and, secondly, as providing an unfailing supply of cheap grain for countries in which -the industiial population depends on imports for its food. Out of an estimated population of 1 10,000,000 in Russia. 110,000,000 millions were peasants- 1 It did not take much imagination to realise the total output of cereals of which they were capable, if properly organised, given the vast extent of arable land in European and Asiatic Russia and the auxiliary resources in the form, of deposits of phosphates and nitrates at their disposal. The Russian Government, the ai ticle points out, has set itself to this task of organisation with all the violent fanaticism of which it had shown itself capable in other fields of industry'. Mr Knickerbocker, in his inbook ‘The Soviet Five-year Plan.’ had told the story of the too rapid application up to 1929 of Communist violence to agriculture; but to-day two-thirds of the farm in European. Russia were organised according to the State plan;' No illusion need be harboured as to the enforced character of the agricultural plan, even if the bitter cry of the dispossessed kulak (large farm owner) had not been heard. In 1930 a Soviet official admitted that half a million kulak families were banished from their homes. They had been scattered and forced to work at tasks alien to those for which their training as farmers made them fit. “If in the end,” the writer comments, “the system ensures that wheat, rye, and other agricultural products can be produced more cheaply by it than under systems where individual ownership and local competition are given scope, it may justify itself in spite of all the. harshness and indignity which it so obviously involves. If, on the contrary, it is all bluff and the real costs, though concealed to-day, are as heavy or heavier than those of ‘capitalist’ farmers and peasants, then in the long run it will fail, as for the moment the older systems seem to have failed

. . . . The syriipathy xyhich we new* feel for the dispossessed peasants may be tempered a little by the reflection that, had they stood loyally by each other as an agricultural class, they might have avoided some of the evils which have since befallen them.”

Two kinds of collective farms, apart from the State farms, are described. In the standard —and, eventually, universal—collectors farm—the kolkhoz—land, equipment, stock and everything are State property, the original owners being charged with the task of extracting a profit for the State out of it. The fiction of a personal share in profits is maintained by an elaborate'system of calculation, but the final result is the same- The participants get a few debased roubles, the State takes the crop, less a pittance in kind given to members in lieu of wages. The basis of profit distribution is piecework. Each member of the collective farm has a little book, in which is recorded daily the per centage of his allotted task. More often, however, a general average of work is struck for the week by the “brigadier” of the farm. In the distribution returns are based upon a fixed sum .in roubles per bushel of wheat and' rye harvested. If the rouble is taken at par it work out at a little less than 5s per bushel of wheat. But the internal buying power of the rouble is excessively small, and the difficulty of attaching any reality to the value of the rouble renders calculations concerning the cost of labour of any sort meaningless. Depreciation, transport, machinery, petrol, seed, and manures are made, however. The possession of roubles is obviously no substitute for the fuller rations of ilcur, milk, eggs, and vegetables, which were to be had when the farms were in the hands of their former owners. In one of the restaurants of a normal collective farm the members complained of insufficient food. “In the old days,” they said, “we had cows and could dispose of the millk as we pleased for ourselves and our children. Now we get no milk and our children but little. For a hard-work-ing man what we get to live on does not suffice.”

Dealing with the question of the dumping of exported cereals, Sir Thomas Cuninghamc states that “if the value of the rouble be taken at the estimate of tlie Russian Government, then Russian wheat is sold at Liverpool and Hamburg at a loss- Per contra, if the rouble be assessed at its real buying value inside Russia it is impossible to make any comparison. Inflation has deprived calculation of all meaning. The only sane criterion is the stale of living, comfort, and culture of the labomers themselves. We have still a few years’ before Russia becomes strong and fat and free again to begin her undermining work,” he concludes. “It is not safe to leave Europe in the state in which it is at present- Competitive struggling must give way to complementary planning, under which, amongst other things, some way must be found to help the individual farmer against his Communist competitor, even Jf the Homo market for the European farmer it? extended to the boundaries of the Contihent.”