AGRICULTURE UNDER THE SOVIET

King Country Chronicle, Volume XXVI, Issue 3443, 15 March 1932, Page 3

AGRICULTURE UNDER THE SOVIET

COLLECTIVE FARMING. All 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 Cunninghame contributes an informative article on the subject, under the title of "The Menace to Russian Agriculture," to the December number of the National Review. The possibility of a vastly increased volume of Russian cereal output, he writes, has 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 industrial population depends on imports for its food. Out of an estimated population of 140,000,000 in Russia, 110,000,000 were peasants. 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.

Russian Government's Task.

The Russian Government, the article points out, has set to this task of organisation with all the violent fanaticism of which it has shown itself capable in other, fields of industry. Mr. Knickerbocker, in his informative book, "The Soviet FiveYear Plan," has told the story of the too rapid application up to 1929 of Communist violence to agriculture, but to-day two-thirds of the farms in European Russia were organised according to the State plan. No illusions 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 sympathy which we

now 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 befalen them."

Two Kinds of Farms.

Two kinds of collective farms, apart from the State farms, are described. In the standard—and, eventually, universal— collective 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 action 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 piece work. Each member of the collective farm has a little book in which is ; recorded daily the percentage of his allotted task. More often, however, 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 works 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 io the. value, ot the rouble renders calculations meaningless. Deductions on account of capital and depreciation, transport, machinery, petrol, seed and manures are made, however. The possession of roubles is obviously no substitute for the fuller ration of flour, 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 norinal collective farm all members complained of insufficient food. "In the old days," he said, "we had cows and could dispose of the milk as we pleased for ourselves and our children. Now we get no milk and our children get little. For a hard-working man, what we get to live on does not suffice."

Dumping of Cereals.

Dealing with the question of the dumping of exported cereals, Sir Thomas Cunninghame states that "if the value of the rouble be taken at the estimate of the 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 state of living, comfort and culture of the labourers themselves. We still have 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, among other things, some way must *be found to hejp the individual farmer against his Communist competitor, even if the home market for the European farmer is extended to the boundaries of the Continent."