DEFICIENCY IN SOVIET AGRICULTURE
. The latest issue of the Italian left Socialist weekly Mondo Nuovo has published the full text of a recent report by Khrushchev on the state of Soviet agriculture. While trying to justify the course he has followed and cover up the grave deficiencies of his own agricultural policy -- Khrushchev has. imposed his views on the planning of Soviet agricultural production. for more than ten years! -- the report contains some interesting admissions. These cast a revealing light on the reasons for the present wheat crisis in the Soviet Union, They also confirm the correctness of the criticism which the. Fourth International. has.directed at Khrushchev! s agricultural policy tor some years. a Khrushchev states that the Soviet Union is at present producing. 20, 000, 000 tons of mineral fertilizer a year. This compares with 35,000,000 tons» in the United States. Khrushchev points out that these figures require adjustment, since American farmers cultivate only 118,000,000 hectares as~ compared to 218,000,000 in the USSR. Thus to restore the same amount of fertilizer to the soil as is the practice in the United States, fertilizer production in the USSR would have to be increased to 70,000,000 tons. . In other words on comparable areas of iland, Soviet agriculture invests less then thirty per cent of the current ‘amount in the U.S,
Khrushchev also points out that although an output of 20,000,000 tons of mineral fertilizer is considerable Tor the USSR, ‘part of it is: "not used
oe
+ but only wasted. Hills of it lie in the open for months at railway side... ings. Covered with snow in. the winter, they offer a convenient site for ~: | small boys to go coasting with their sleds, oo . -
CP