Trouble Down On the Farm

By Patricia Blake

Drought, rainstorms, theft and perennial mismanagement

On the gently rolling plains of southern Russia and the Ukraine, stunted stalks of wheat and corn lay flat on the rich black earth, blighted by drought and wind. In the lower Volga region, rain mercilessly pelted burgeoning grain; harvesting combines stood idle as farmers watched the crop sink into the mud. The forecast is bleak this summer in the kolkhozy (collective farms) and sovkhozy (state farms) of the Soviet grain belt, where capricious weather has caused a third consecutive bad harvest--with an anticipated shortfall of 51 million metric tons in Soviet grain production.

Ironically, one key purveyor of the bad news to the Soviets has been the U.S. Department of Agriculture. So accurate have its forecasts of Soviet yields proved in the past that the distribution of DOA news bulletins in Washington this summer regularly attracted Soviet journalists. According to U.S. specialists who have analyzed satellite photos of Soviet farm land and who have also visited rural areas, the 1981 grain yield will amount to less than 185 million metric tons--21.6% below the target of 236 million in the current Soviet five-year plan. Grain production will be up imperceptibly from 179.2 million tons in 1979, and down marginally from 189.2 million last year.

Though the Soviet press has yet to report the full extent of the grain shortfall to its readers, newspapers have been full of revealing stories. Farmers have been exhorted to get crops in as fast as possible, before they are drowned by rain. Warnings have been issued against waste. A front-page editorial in Pravda denounced excess eating of bread. Evening Moscow cited World War II Veteran N. Semenov's complaint that "it is impossible to stand by indifferently when you see how many dried-up pieces of bread are being thrown out."

Southern Russia and the Ukraine have sweltered through the hottest summer on record: wheat and corn have withered on the stalk. In addition, the weather played a cruel trick on farmers. When the grain was maturing and needed rain, the skies were cloudless. But as harvest time approached and dry weather was needed to reap the crop, thundershowers drenched the land. Corn, which is used widely for livestock feed, was badly affected in the flowering stage last month when it most needed moisture. Moreover, the unusual heat accelerated the growth of soybeans and barley so that everything had to be harvested at once. News from the Ukraine showed men and equipment at work in the fields at night, an indication of the pressure caused by multiple harvesting. Says a Western analyst in Moscow: "The Soviets just don't have enough machinery to handle the job." Climatic vagaries have been compounded by perennial Soviet agricultural mismanagement. Incentives to collective farmers to increase production still appear to be lacking. Gaping holes between rows of wheat and other crops are evidence of farmers' disinclination to make every inch of land count. To compound the problem, thievery is widespread. Says one Western agricultural expert: "Collective-farm drivers just stop their trucks along the road somewhere and empty a pile of grain on the ground. Then they come back to collect it to feed their own livestock or to sell privately." So pervasive is the practice in major grain-growing areas of the Ukraine that police regularly patrol the roads looking for I tell tale mounds of grain.

Finally, poor distribution and simple inefficiency exact a gigantic toll. In some parts of the Soviet Union threshing is still carried on as it was 200 years ago. Foreign travelers report seeing old women in the fields flailing the grain with wooden paddles, then winnowing by throwing kernels and hulls in the air, letting the wind separate the two. Another not infrequent sight: grain combines mowing while collection trucks follow much too far behind. "The combines literally funnel the grain right back into the fields, missing the trucks completely," says one bemused Western specialist. Western estimates put waste at between 20% and 40% of the total harvest.

In spite of these setbacks, the Soviet planners seem determined to furnish the people with enough bread and to prevent the mass slaughter of livestock for lack of feed grains. President Leonid Brezhnev is unwilling to risk a repetition of the demonstrations over food shortages that shook Nikita Khrushchev in 1962, when Russian workers painted USE KHRUSHCHEV FOR SAUSAGE MEAT on factory walls. To avoid reducing supplies to minimal levels, the Soviet leaders are expected to spend precious dollars and other hard currency on importing about 40 million metric tons of grain this year.

Despite President Ronald Reagan's lifting of the partial embargo on grain sales to the U.S.S.R. last April, the Soviet shortfall will be no windfall for U.S. farmers. Angry at Washington for having imposed the sales ban after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Moscow has bought only 1.5 million metric tons of the 6 million tons that the U.S. offered last June. Instead, the Soviets have contracted to purchase 47.5 million tons over the next five years from Argentina* and Canada.

An agreement with Australia for up to 3.9 million tons will also help make up the deficit. Clearly, Washington's tactic of using food as a weapon to make Moscow behave in international relations has misfired. Indeed, the U.S. is now scrambling for a share of the Soviets' grain business. Says Deputy Assistant Secretary for Economics J. Dawson Ahalt of the DOA: "It's an interesting turnaround, isn't it?"

--By Patricia Blake.

Reported by Gisela Bolte/ Washington

* Moscow will also take between 60,000 and 100,000 tons of meat annually over the next five years from Argentina.

With reporting by Gisela Bolte

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