|
Soviet Union [USSR] Evolution of an Integrated Food Policy
After the death of Stalin, an integrated food policy gradually
evolved. Nikita S. Khrushchev was the first Soviet leader to
demonstrate serious concern for the diet of the citizenry. In fact,
it was his obsession with increasing the consumption of meat and
dairy products that drove Khrushchev's controversial agricultural
program. He switched the country's prime wheat-growing lands to the
production of corn, which was supposed to feed an ever-increasing
number of livestock. Khrushchev believed that the lost wheat
production could be offset by extensive farming in the semiarid
virgin land of the Kazakh Republic and southwestern Siberia.
However, his program, underfinanced from the start, did not produce
the desired results, a major factor in his fall from power in 1964.
Like his predecessor, Leonid I. Brezhnev considered agriculture
a top priority. Unlike Khrushchev, however, he backed his program
with massive investments. During his tenure, the supply of
livestock housing increased 300 percent, and similar increases in
the delivery of chemical fertilizers and tractors were recorded.
Brezhnev's Food Program, announced in 1982, was intended to guide
agriculture throughout the 1980s. It provided for even larger
investment in the agro-industrial complex (agro-promyshlennyi
kompleks--APK), particularly in its infrastructure
(see Soviet Union USSR - The Complexes and the Ministries
, ch. 12). The program also set up
regional agro-industrial associations (regional'nye agropromyshlennye ob''edineniia--RAPOs) to administer all elements
of the food industry on the
raion (see Glossary),
oblast (see Glossary),
krai (see Glossary), and
autonomous republic (see Glossary) levels. The program's
overriding objective was
improving the availability of food for the consumer. Production
goals now referred to per capita consumption of meat, fruit,
vegetables, and other basic foods. Unlike previous campaigns, the
Food Program gave the same prominence to reducing waste as to
increasing output.
In 1988 Gorbachev, who had been the Central Committee secretary
for agriculture when the Food Program was announced, appeared to be
pursuing a two-pronged approach to agricultural administration. On
the one hand, he attempted to improve the APK's efficiency through
further centralization, having merged five ministries and a state
committee in late 1985 into the State Agro-Industrial Committee
(Gosudarstvennyi agro-promyshlennyi komitet--Gosagroprom).
Eliminated were the Ministry of Agriculture, the Ministry of the
Fruit and Vegetable Industry, the Ministry of the Meat and Dairy
Industry, the Ministry of the Food Industry, the Ministry of
Agricultural Construction, and the State Committee for the Supply
of Production Equipment for Agriculture. But, on the other hand, he
called for delegation of greater decision-making authority to the
farms and farmers themselves.
Gosagroprom proved to be a major disappointment to Gorbachev,
and at the March 1989 Agricultural Plenum of the Central Committee,
the superministerial body was eliminated. Moreover, Gorbachev
complained that the RAPOs meddled excessively in the operations of
individual farms, and he urged abolishing them as well. The general
thrust of the reforms proposed at the plenum was to dismantle the
rigid central bureaucracy, transfer authority to local governing
councils, and increase the participation of farmers in decision
making. Gorbachev also elected to give the individual republics
greater freedom in setting food production goals that were
consistent with the needs of their people.
A key objective of Gorbachev's
perestroika (see Glossary) was to increase labor
productivity by means of the
proliferation of contract brigades throughout the economy.
Agricultural contract brigades consisted of ten to thirty farm
workers who managed a piece of land leased by the kolkhoz or
sovkhoz under the terms of a contract making the brigades
responsible for the entire production cycle. Because brigade
members received a predetermined price for the contracted amount of
output plus generous bonuses for any excess production, their
income was tied to the result of their labors. After 1987 family
contract brigades also became legal, and long-term leasing (up to
fifteen years) was enacted--two reforms that in the opinion of some
Western analysts pointed toward an eventual sanctioning of the
family farm. Because contract brigades enjoyed relative autonomy,
much of the administrative bureaucracy resisted them. Nevertheless,
in 1984 an estimated 296,100 farm workers had already banded
together in contract brigades, and the document Basic Directions
for the Economic and Social Development of the USSR for 1986-1990
and for the Period to the Year 2000 (a report presented to and
subsequently adopted by the Twenty-Seventh Party Congress) called
for their wider use
(see Soviet Union USSR - Reforming the Planning System
, ch. 11).
The March 1989 Agricultural Plenum endorsed contract brigades and
agricultural leasing, a major victory for Gorbachev's reform
effort.
Soon after assuming power in 1985, Gorbachev demonstrated his
intention of reforming another enduring feature of Soviet food
policy--the maintenance of artificially low retail prices for
staples in the state stores. In 1986 he raised prices for certain
categories of bread, the first such increase in over thirty years.
But much remained to be done in this critical area. For example,
milk and meat prices had not been adjusted since 1962. The bill for
food subsidies in 1985 came to nearly 55 billion rubles (for value
of the
ruble--see Glossary); of this, 35 billion rubles was for
meat and milk products alone. By June 1986, the absurdity of the
food subsidy policy had become a matter of open discussion in upper
echelons of the party, and higher prices were expected to take
effect by the end of the Twelfth Five-Year Plan (1986-90).
Data as of May 1989
|
