SOVIET AGRICULTURE

Manawatu Herald, Volume LIV, Issue 4402, 9 October 1934, Page 1

SOVIET AGRICULTURE

A report on “Collectivised Agriculture in tiie Soviet Union” has been published by the London School of Slavonic Studies. It is devided into three parts, dealing respectively with the economic results of the Soviet experiments, with the Soviet Government’s attitude toward the harvest, and with conditions in State and collective farms. The report quotes a statement by M. Stalin, in which he said that the central problem for the Soviet economy was to accelerate the development of grain production to meet the needs of expanding industry and a population increasing at the rate of 3,000,000 a year. But the evidence of the Soviet authorities themselves shows that there is less grain per head of the population than in 1913. Although the gross production of cereals has increased by 9,700,000 tons since 1913, the true net production is only some 60 or 70 per cent, of this amount. When it is remembered that an excessive share is taken by the State for the town population, the Bed Army, and for export, it is clear, the report declares, that large numbers of peasants may starve even in years of abundant harvest. Even more than in pre-war - days the staple diet of the peasants is bread, as the policy of the Government leaves him no surplus for the proper feeding of livestock, the production of which is in most cases half that of 1916. The net. surplus of grain available for distribution to the peasants on the 50 best collective farms is stated to be only 34 per cent, of their total production, and it is the peasant who suffers by the Government’s policy of exporting grain at extremely low prices to meet its foreign obligations. The grain prices paid by the Government to the peasants in 1933 were calculated to be at least 18 times lower than the prices obtainable in the open market, and at least 10 times lower than the prices at which they were sold by the Government. The conclusion of the report is that “in most years hunger must b 6 -widespread.”