(AV_167742_a) post-war Technological Economic and Institutional Development in USSR Agricultural
oh just for the recording i want to welcome you to the first of a number of lectures this summer on the summer series there is a listing out and i think you can perhaps keep for record and or be aware of what is being spoken up and on on a particular day tomorrow is in the same room at three o'clock the jody rottler has been involved in the women's liberation movement here and also associated with the union who's going to speak on i've forgotten the exact title but the role of women and stereotypes stereotype views that we should remove and for this almost predominantly male audience i would suggest that maybe some of you come and get straightened out this time i'd like to introduce professor fouad who will introduce our speaker for today dr nils christian westermark is professor of agriculture agricultural economics at the university of helsinki he his vita is quite long and i selected just few things to give our audience or not to mere with dr westermark's background some idea about his credentials among the former positions he held in his country finland various positions with the production of food and including being minister of agriculture which corresponds in this country to being secretary of the department of agriculture from mark's talk today is entitled post-war technological economic and institutional development in ussr agricultural development dr westermark well i think that perhaps everybody knows that the farms in soviet union are organized either as collective farms called coal horses or are run directly by the state as show in both cases the land is the property of the state the soul horse is entirely owned and controlled by the state so has workers have paid summer holidays and other social privileges for example they are paid the same wage even in poor years except on very prosperous coal horses the coalhouse farmers have had none of these advantages a call host farmer can influence decision making and thus has a double function he is both employer as a member of the co-host and employed the recent history of soviet agriculture dates from 53 when stalin died incentives in agriculture then were miserable wages were low or non-existent and state procurement price is low during 53-58 thanks to the opening up of new lands some good seasons and nikita khrushchev's enthusiasm soviet agriculture production increased by about 50 this led soviet planners to have two high hopes of what might be achieved later on already after the winding up of the new economic policy in the soviet in the 30s there has been a fairly consistent tendency to increase the number of and extent of sow horses in relation to coal horses whereas at first some horses occupied only 25 of the zone area in 1970 they occupied around half their share has been increased both by the creation almost exclusively of sow horses in the new land areas and by the conversion of coal horses to saw horses a comparison of selected 70 data brings out marked differences between the two types of farms even now that they have become more similar in table one which has been distributed to you i do hope that everybody has a copy we have some statistical data we have no time to penetrate those data more truly but we can see that for the time being there are about 34 000 coal horses and 15 000 sow horses and the total zone area is in the both group are relatively similar we also see that the average zone area performed in hectares in the coalhouse sector is lower than in the soho sectors the farms the sawhorses are therefore larger about two and a half times so large as the coal horses coal horse households are allowed to have private plots so host workers have less freedom through even they have access to some privately operated land but the land in all cases is owned by the state coal horse families have been criticized for devoting much more effort to their private plots which occupy only a small namely three point two percent of the farm area but are used intensively coal horse and sawhorse types of farm differ also according to payment the land as already mentioned always is owned by the state also on a small scale there are the host household plots are run on capitalist a principle the farmers devote much time to their cultivation resulting in high yields the marketing of a produce of personal subsidiary farming i mean this is the same as household plots deviates from the principle of a socialist economy and resembles the capitalist pattern in times of scarcity the price is determined by supply and demand the farmers sell their surplus products on these conditions families living far from cities are likely to consume most of their products themselves but if a city is close by it is more probably that they bring their commodities to the market and sell them for cash the families are not only allowed to sell their produce they are free to determine their prices even if there are set two or three times higher than the level in the state owned stories the government accepts this form or private initiative and thus a system of double marketing prices is created as it is quite useful that commodities are sometimes not available in the state-owned stores a profit of this kind is generally made and it is entirely legal it should be pointed out however that the significance of the market is relatively small the state-owned and cooperative stores control the trade however the free markets function as a kind of barometer indicating consumers wishes moreover the household plots are the safety valve of socialist agriculture which levels the fluctuation in a socialized production vendison say some few words about the horses the contra the soul horses then in the soho sector in the state farm sector we can say that every and and every soho is a independent enterprise and each given a definite assignment for the production of agriculture commodities that are needed by the country's economy each state farm has a main branch in which it's specialized proceeding from the planned assignments of the state for producing marketable output additional branches are organized for a more efficient use of the resources in big state farms with favorable conditions these branches organized on a large scale are highly mechanized state farms and other state agriculture enterprises account for the time being for about 38 percent of the total marketable agriculture output where the coal horses account for 50 and consequently the residual 12 is produced on the household plots the state authorities determine the prices for agriculture commodities in the different parts of the soviet union except what has already mentioned on the household post where the price where no price regulations exist the producers prices are the result of a compromise between two contrary goals on the one hand the prices must be sufficiently low to warrant a high productivity in the industry sector on the other hand sufficiently high to make possible and increase production and investment on the farms serving the maintenance of reasonable standards of living for the farm people today price calculations are based on the average production cost per produced unit i think it's a rather interesting phenomenon the price calculation is based on the average production cost per produced unit for every enterprise this favors farms with a high cost and a poor economic position rational units miss certain advantages but they are compensated for this by the privilege of receiving a higher price for produce exceeding the planned amount then coming back to the period during khrushchev's era the general repression of the private sector under khrushchev's regime is generally known as support so under khrushchev the soul horses were pressed to restrict private enterprises although the assurance had been made that in transforming coal horses into seoul horses the size of the household plots would not be diminished the campaign against the plots and livestock of sawhorse workers in fact resulted in such restrictions in the new south horses both the general restriction of the private sector and the specific results of the conversions into soho's this affected a shift of private agriculture production to workers i'm sorry to the southern climatically favored parts of the country with their predominantly intensive soil utilization they transfer into salt horses from coal horses had a double significance and effect not only did it shift weight from the coal horses to the sole horses but also from the private to the socialized sector in general but since khrushchev's removal in 64 64 the transformation of coal horsey into soho has to a great extent lost this side effect the reason is that the norms governing the use of the soil and the keeping of livestock for private purposes introduced in 64 for sawhorse workers no longer differ in essence from the private operations existing in the cohort sector here one can see an important new development the effects of which will be of great interest in the coming years since the restrictions of the private sector were abolished in some horses after the removal of a new increase in private production has occurred according to the german expert dr eddie king whom i have cited here in many respects the age structure of the soviet farm population it's generally rather unfavorable on differs in its effect in the private and in the social sector the private sector gains more workers as more retired people become available the soviet scientist ticonoff looks on the existence of a private private production sector in somewhat different way to what i have here mentioned according to him the socialist labor is practically the only form of professional labor even labor in personal subsidiary farming is in fact according taken of a particular or labor utilized in socialist society in a planned way the share of the gross product of personal subsidiary farming is systematically declining in view of the growth of the socialist sector but for some types of produce personal subsidiary farming still accounts for a considerably share a potatoes 62 percent eggs 50 vegetables 40 meat and milk 38 in 71 at the same time in the production of wool the socialized sector prevails and in the production of grain sunflower seed cotton and sugar beet it completely predominates the share of personal subsidiary farming in the marketable output of agriculture amounts to 8 in the output of crop husbandry and to 16 in the output of animal husband personal subsidiary farming differs from small peasant farming and even private enterprises according to tickenoff in the following respects first it is organically connected with the common enterprise of the state and collective farms and is conducted on the farm yard plots which are property of the state second a considerable path of raw materials consumed in the personal subsidiary farming is produced directly in the social sector or with the help of socialized means of production third the main part of the labor in subsidiary farming is contributed by persons who owing to the age are not included in the total labor force of agriculture that means juveniles and retired people and also non-working members or families engage in socialized production through not socialized labor in personal subsidiary farming is a particle of the socialist social labor its efficiency is determined by the efficiency of labor in the social sector of agriculture production as regard the statement of dr tikonov toward the end of his administration khrushchev made the following statement the sole horses are state enterprises they are easier to control and to administrate they give better assurance that the investment of capital will be and they in this will be more rationally utilized that a similar attitude is prevalent also today is apparent in that in all references to specialization and localization which are emphasized over and over again the soul horses are given obvious preference as long as the balance of labor in soviet agriculture is not even as long as there are acute deficiency symptoms in some parts of the country and a surplus of labor in other parts the development of production in the three sectors so horses call horses and household plots depends decisively on the availability of labor it is not the chance that a transfer into sub-horses on a large scale took place mainly in parts of the country that had a more or less critical balance of labor for the time being the transfer from coal horses to sub-horses take place more slowly obviously in my opinion owing to the fact that such a change claims large amounts of capital and adjustment of organization and management in the soviet union the question as to the desirable size of enterprises has been settled on the basis of political doctrine without having been subjected enough to theoretical research only subsequently has a problem of the optimal size of an farm unit attract attention and certain investigations seem to indicate that the giant enterprises do not represent the optimal size they have exceeded it the question may be posed as to whether the huge saw horses and co-hosts with many departments running their own accounts and with separate managerial centers should still be considered as operational units this role seems to have been taken over by the various departments in accordance with marx doctrine it was considered appropriate to furnish socialized agricultural enterprises with modern technological equipment first the saw horses were supplied as far as possibly with tractors and machinery as regards the coal horses a proper plano organization was lacking in the 20s however at the end of this decade such a plan was developed as a special social solution to the problem of mechanization however for 30 years from 28 to 5 to 58 a certain complement to the co-hosts existed in the form of machine tractor station mts and that was perhaps one of the most conspicuous characteristics of the socialist agricultural system the mts organization i mean the machine tractor station organization functioned as the industrial material technical basis of the cohort system this form of organization which played an important role in part in the collectivisation of soviet agriculture is today abundant however a development that does not seem surprising weaved against the background of the communist doctrine the cohort system as such is also a transitional form in a way the mts experiment can also be viewed as a trial of excessive specialization it implied a separation of machine technology from the productional units proper technology was organized as large service enterprises it is obvious however that the advantages of large-scale farming and specialization could not compensate for the harmful consequences of isolating organic parts from the production units the managerial problems of the mts organization was not solved to satisfaction either during the period of the mts existence the coal horses were not allowed to possess any machinery equipment they had to use the service of the machine tractor stations when the co-hosts were enlarged this arrangement ceased to be rational and with the course of the time the political control over the co-hosts exercised by the mts political sections had become unnecessary the communist party had established sub-organizations within the co-horses which made external control or guns superfluous moreover the mts system had proved very expensive because tens of thousands of so-called brigadiers had been employed by the mts and the coal horses in parallel for almost exactly the same tasks a the basic form of labor organization in the soviet agriculture is the brigade work labor brigades are formed usually in consisting of 30 to 40 workers under the leadership of a brigadier the brigades are often divided into subgroups of five to ten workers under a group leader it is however not possibly here to discuss in detail the development of the brigade system it may briefly be stated that after the abandonment of the mts system the labor organization of the coal horses has approached that of the show forces and the difference between them will probably soon disappear altogether the current tendency is to institute brigades with a complete machine equipment there are today field regards livestock brigades and in addition so-called universal brigades furthermore there are mechanized labor groups which are designated for certain special tasks such as the cultivation of sugar beets corn and potatoes the basic form of remuneration that call horses and saw horses is payment according to performance but time wages also occur when automation has been realized wages per hour are considered to be a potentially even more progressive form of remuneration than payment according to performance so far however the latter system has been predominant in the soviet union a fundamental distinctive feature of labor in large socialist agriculture enterprises state and coal horse farms is the ever deeper division of labor in the agriculture prior to the great revolution 1917 the peasant as a rule performed all the jobs in crop and animal husbandry a collective farmer or state farm worker specialized in performing operation in one branch this reduces the number of functions he performs and creates favorable conditions for acquiring higher skill the number of universal workers is reduced and the number of workers with a narrow specialization increases the expansion of the technical facilities and transition of industrial industrial methods make new demands on the educational level of personnel in the mass vocations a need arises in workers who have not only special training but also a sufficiently high level of general education in view of this the general educational level of workers in crop and animal husbandry is swiftly rising at the seminar hall some years ago in warsaw poland arranged by the police academy of science and the international association of agricultural economists one research worker from soviet union madame sassafra from the siberian branch of the ussr academy of science presented an interesting paper dealing with the labor productivity and shortage of labor in siberia from her paper i have quoted the following rather critical comments most eastern areas of the soviet are notable for rigorous climate but the southern part of siberia is agriculturally productive suitable for livestock and grain growing the efficiency of agriculture in western siberia is 20 above the average for the soviet union the cost of the most important products is the same as the average for the country the main factor retarding the rate of agriculture development in siberia is the shortage of labor evaluations conclude that if a fuller a more effective utilization of production resources is the a the number of agriculture workers must be increased in siberia but this is very difficult to achieve there is a high migration rate of siberian rural people to the cities as a result the number of rural workers in western siberia is falling even quicker than the average for the country the rapid outflow of young people from the siberian countryside has serious consequences in rural social life and it impedes agriculture progress by diminishing the number of skilled workers and equipment needed to run the ever expanding fleet of tractors and other machinery the findings on madame sofskaya were that a significant rise of production was achieved only in those groups of farms which succeeded in increasing their numbers of workers planning calculations support the view that economic efficiency would be solved by increasing the number of workers in siberian agriculture but this result has not been attained in practice the number of rural workers has decreased faster than the average for the soviet this calls for research into the reasons and motives for the mobility of the rural workers and for working out practical measures for controlling it from the national level down to the level of a single enterprise the farms which suffer most from labor sorties continue to lose labor by those better supplied gay new workers because they can offer better working and living conditions in siberian regions a strong tendency to move from collective farms to state farms was recently noticed this fact to get away with the direct evidence obtained in a special survey of the population of collective and state farms points to the need to achieve a more rational control over the movement of labor in collective and state farms the living conditions of the people in collective farms are still far worse than those in state farms the rates of pay are lower and the provision of housing education and medical facilities transport services and consumer goods is worse at the same time collective farms as a form of economy have a good prospect i'm sorry as a form of economy have as good prospects and are as viable as state farms madame states with equal rates of pay provision of equipment and transport facilities the mobility of labor in collective farms appears more favorable than on state farms therefore the task is to level up the economic and living conditions of a population of collective and state farms an important factor of migration to the city is dissatisfaction with the system of leadership in agriculture the rural population suffers from much from middle level supervisors such as brigadiers and others who have often had very little formal training in contrast to the young generation first coming to work in industry the low educational level of the supervisors and the repugnance towards any innovation often cause psychological strengths and conflicts in young people who eventually leave the land well what i just mentioned was an excerpt of a paper elucidating in a critically prospective way prevailing problems in the west siberian agriculture due to technological development in the siberian society while the collective farms grew larger and larger the units reached a stage when existing form of management was inadequate this has stimulated the development of cooperation among collective farms at the beginning of 65 there were four thousand so-called inter-collective organizations and associations of this type represent forms of what we call for horizontal integration on the other hand agriculture enterprises unite with state plants processing farm produce processing enterprise are organized within specialized farms and a factory farm arises on these bases or agriculture enterprises associate with trading establishments with a view to improve the sales of produce this form or these forms of association represents vertical integration and both this type of integration are now typical for the farming in the soviet union i will end in citing some sentences from the 24th congress of the communist party of the soviet union which congress was held in moscow one and a half years ago at this occasion in the earlier two very interesting reports were delivered one of them by the secretary general leonid brezhnev and the second one by the premier alexei kosigan is it it is indeed worthwhile to give here a very at least at least a very brief summary of the statements so far as agriculture is concerned breisner stressed that for a number of reasons agriculture has been and for the time being remains the most difficult and complex sector of ussr economy that is why it is a source of satisfaction that the efforts now have been crowned with major achievements he continued but he also put his finger on many weak spots in the agriculture in soviet he pointed also that as before increasing grain production is one of the main tasks in the soviet agriculture the grain needs have been growing from year to year and this applies not only to food grain but also to feed grain the production of which should should be expanded in view of the necessity of rapidly developing animal husbandry also bresniff mentioned that at present personal subsidiary husbandry still plays an appreciable role in the production of meat and milk however here and there this does not get the attention it deserves and then some sentences from the speech of mr cassign he also emphasized that increasing grain production remains the key problem in soviet agriculture during the fourth coming five year period grain yields must be increased he said by at least two four centers per hectare through not an easy task this is quite feasible four sentence per hectare corresponds roughly to 180 pounds per acre the increasing need of animal produce also calls for a growth in the number of livestock and poultry an increase in their productivity and expansion of the output of meat milk wool and other products to accelerate the growth of the output of livestock farming and enhance it its efficacy prohibition has been made for the building or mechanized stock units at collective and state farms and setting up near the towns or large state and collective farm are in an inter-collective farm complexes putting out livestock products by industrial methods and also of poultry factories one of the immediate tasks in the development of stock farming is to enlarge the further resources an increase of the number of livestock and poultry personally owned that means the household plots where the rural population must be encouraged and help render in supplying their livestock with further and posture this statement seems to me is a very interesting one because it implies that the so-called household plots are fully accepted and recognized as a kind of food supply also mr brezhnev as i just mentioned pointed out the same matter affects although more vaguely the big qualitative changes taking place in the material and technical basis of agriculture are making new demands on its management system in soviet the large-scale highly mechanized economy of the collective and state farms is drawing ever closer to modern industrial production hence the need to apply in agriculture modern forms and methods on management make wide use of means of mechanization and automation or management processes and train skill person here i have also the second table i suppose that somebody has al already have a look on the table the table shows the statistical figures for the agriculture production during the last decade so to say and here we have an indication of that the production has been risen everybody knows however that during last year the crop was decreased and everybody knows i am sure also the shipping business from usa to the soviet for the time being i don't wish here to put my finger in this business nobody knows how permanent it will be i have here i give try to give an information about the problems now existing in the soviet union agriculture and we can if we like to sum up what i have said here we can say that for the time being soviet agriculture has intricate economic relations between collective and state farms on the on hand and enterprises and organizations which purchase and process agriculture produce on the other between agriculture enterprises themselves and so on which seems to me to be quite a uh should be an oversupply of labor on the land i mean it's a very high relationship you mean that it's a short short labor in siberia my statement about the shortest of labor referring to is there an oversupply but in certain regions there are a shortage of labor and then to one more point these numbers of persons engaged in agriculture which are indicated here they they are not only agricultural workers and particularly on the coal horses there are in those numbers are included also persons engaged in the services in the school in the medical care and in this kind of of people and of course i should say that is still a surplus of labor but maybe the surplus is is not so great as perhaps these figures can give an opinion well yeah youth i would like to clarify your interpretation of the production figures here a bit further it clearly shows that from 66 to 70 there's a considerable increase yeah yeah from over 1961 to 65. do you see this mainly as a result of better efficiency particularly on the soap posing or are there other factors contributing to this increased land under production to what extent did weather conditions what other factors you see i am not an expert in the soviet uh soviet agriculture also i have been there many times but firstly i should say that the weather conditions have played a considerable role and secondly from the statistic it's evident that the production costs on the sow horses are greater are higher than the production cost on the whole horses but this doesn't reflect the objective comparison because the coal horses are located in the more favorable areas of the soviet union and so horses are located in in the more in the in the new land area and and more more in the east then i really cannot say which system is is more efficient the politic anyway the policy anyway favored the the the sovereign system are there statistics showing what the increase was on contrast no i i know i have not find it yeah of course we can no no i have not found this such a figures but there perhaps we can get them or they use simpler simpler tools and then then there is as a matter of fact there exists what we can call a a concealed transfer of resources from from the socialist sector to the private sector i mean people take some feed feed for the cattle from the socialist sector and and this and also perhaps fertilizers and this kind of or concealed transformation then but i i see this as an as an indication of that people still still have an interest to to be more or less independent entrepreneurs or through in a very limited scale yeah um yeah know that in the last couple of years the soviet union has been buying grain from this country quite extensively if one reads the current magazines in this country the explanation they give for soviet agricultural production problems is lack incentives yeah never or very certain does one ever see any mention made of weather factors or climate factors uh affecting soviet production will the soviet union in the long run always have an agricultural production problem those other i think that every country we still have agriculture problems and i think that the problems they are shifting and and if i am replying to the question in a more indirect way than the policy here in this country is for the time being uh quite an and another than it was two or three years ago and because i have i have read some papers or speeches by the uh your minister of the secretary of agriculture and now now you are you are putting more more emphasis here in this country on on the on the export and that cannot mean anything else that that the government in this country is is calculating with that there will be a deficit in some other countries and for instance in soviet union i i cannot interpret the policy now just on the threshold so to say in this country in other words and of course of course we can say that the agriculture in soviet is is more sensitive for weathers i think than in the states particularly in the in the new regions and uh and during crew chops era perhaps too much of the new land was taken into cultivation new land which not in the long run can can serve as agricultural land well i am not sure that i could answer your question well chemical yeah is that uh going up it needs more yeah yeah your use of fertilizer is is going up that's that's a matter of fact as a very high priority part of agriculture what do you feel are the possibilities that russia might have say between these alternatives between producing the feed grains in order to get their animal proteins or in terms of importing their feed grains to get their animal proteins or in terms of importing their animal proteins and actually i haven't seen any uh uh in indications of what where are the probabilities attached to each one of those alternatives in terms of realizing they're increasing proteins in for human beings but that's anyway interesting to note that both both brezhnev and kassigan in their speeches they first and foremost stressed the importance of produce small grain and i have interpreted this in such a way that in the short run they will put most emphasis on grain production and i don't know if anybody has been in moscow or in some other other cities in soviet union recently but there have been a shortage of brent in in some in some instances we cannot deny it but then we come to the long run long run aspects and i should think that for political reasons soviet the aim of the intention of soviet government is to become as soon as possible self-sufficient also in the protein and there are of course technical possibilities i should say there are very good technical possibilities to grow to grow a protein folder i think the political reasons are the dominant well yeah you have comments regarding a general question about these five-year plans we have heard for many years of a series of five-year plans yeah has that been a method by which the your what extent has that been goals have been achieved and progress has been made you mean in the long run or i i think i have no figures about that but i have only a feeling that that the targets have not been fulfilled in at least not in all respects and if we if we go back to the chops era during then my feeling is that the plans at that time they were too optimistic and now now they have a more realistic grasp on the problem but to what extent this current five years plan we will be fulfilled or not it's i am not capable to give any answer it doesn't seem to be but nobody knows well yeah do you have any uh feel for the difference between the wheel the agricultural uh how much uh one is i have no other in the indication of what i already mentioned that in the in the speech of mr cassign he said that four center prohectors should be a realistic to increase the gradient yeah it it's rather modest yeah but yeah you can see that they are more careful now than during
2021-01-19 04:36