LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Soviet Agriculture
built 653 days ago
The lack of success in finding a solution to the food problem was partly due to Germany's inability to effectively revamp Soviet agriculture during the limited time available and to her scruples in burdening an already downtrodden population even further. Thus, assistance measures like the so-called Ostackerprogramm, while gigantic in terms of absolute aid to the agriculture of the Occupied Eastern Territories, were really doomed to failure from the start because they did not remove the cause of the problem. In effect, Germany tried to keep alive by artificial means the amputated trunk of a society devoid of its brains and muscles.
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After the WWII the Soviet agriculture was slow to expand. In some regions, such as the Baltic's, agricultural production actually dropped. significantly. There are many factors which contributed to the stagnation of farm production. First of all, a large number of skilled farm workers was sent to the industrial sector and sufficient machinery was not provided to make up for the loss in labor. Another detrimental factor was the adamant resistance to collectivization by the peasants. People had less incentive to work as hard, since their profit was not related to the amount they produced, and out of resentment towards Soviet control many crops were destroyed.
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Soviet socialist agriculture can perhaps be improved, but it has not failed. Socialist plans have often failed, but they have frequently failed only relative to admirably high goals. Soviet agriculture is reasonably productive but it is likely that it could be made more productive with increased investment in equipment and infrastructure, with more decentralized, better organized management and with rewards more carefully linked to work effort. Waste exists, but it could be reduced with improved storage and transportation facilities. Persistent shortages of meat and dairy products (and associated high subsidy costs) exist because of increased levels of consumption... shortages could be reduced if those items were priced to better reflect their cost of production. In this paper it has been shown that over the past decades Soviet socialist agriculture has made much progress, so in that sense it is not a failure.
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Collectivization sought to modernize Soviet agriculture, consolidating the land into parcels that could be farmed by modern equipment using the latest scientific methods of agriculture. It was often claimed that an American Fordson tractor (called "Фордзон" in Russian) was the best propaganda in favor of collectivization. The Communist Party, which adopted the plan in 1929, predicted an increase of 330% in industrial production, and an increase of 50% in agricultural production.
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The reason the Soviets wanted to implement collectivized agriculture was multifaceted; first of all the old arrangement consisted of small plots of land with large unused gaps in between, which served as boundaries. The new system allowed for all the farms to be connected... increasing the total amount of cultivated land and giving scope for mechanized farming. Increased mechanization would mean fewer workers were necessary to produce the same basket of goods; leaving more people available for labor in the industrial sector. The Soviet planning committee also saw collectivized farming as a way to produce more and collect the finished products in an easier, more efficient manner. Most importantly, eliminating privatized farming was essential to making the transition from capitalism to communism.
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Soviet agriculture was huge. It accounted for nearly a third of total annual national investment and employed nearly 20 percent of the labor force. Farm production alone claimed 20 percent of annual investment and a similar share of the labor force, compared to less than 5 percent for both in the United States. Soviet farmers cultivated about a third more land than American farmers, but their average yield per acre was only 56 percent of that in the United States.
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Soviet Agriculture