RUSSIA REVISING AGRICULTURAL POLICY from Financial Times 1/10/63
Faced with a very bad harvest this yoar which has already forced them to look to Canada and the U.S. for grain, the Soviet Government appears to be in the process of revising its entire agricultural policy, Mr. Khruske chov seems to have abandoned his raliance on extensive farming of the cold and ill+favoured lands of Siberia and Kazakhstan, and to have turned instead to irrig ation and a much greater use of fertilisers, designed to make morse intensive use of the warm, black-carthed regions of South Russia and the Ukraine.
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Almost the entire front page of Sunday's Pravda (Sept. 29th) is devoted to reporting a visit by Mx. Khrushchoy to Krasnodar, centre of the North Caucasus region of South Russia. Near tho stort of the report is written in black type = "Irrigated lendssand fortilisers —- these mean guaran; teed high yields, these are our wealth." This statemont is used for the paper's headline, A statement of this kind in Pravda hes almost the force =. of an official declaration of government policy,
The most striking innovation of Mr. Khrushchoy's farm polioy has of course boen the cultivation of the huge virgin lands of Siberia and Kagakhstans These lands, first tilled in 1954-55, soon started tq bring in about 40m. tons of grain a year = an addition of about 40% to the previous harvest totals, But yields from the virgin lends have been declin ing throughout the 60's, Cold weather has coused muchtrouble, but still more serious has been the effect of the dry conditions which are normal, not exceptional, for that part of the world. Reports this year have hinted at a further fall in catastrophic fall in yields, and it looks as if the oarth tharo is in the danger of drying out and beooming a dust bowl,
Thus it looks very much as if the Soviet Government has decided to “write off" the virgin lands and start an entiroly new policy of intensive | farming in the Buropean part of the country. Tass newiagency quotes Lir. Khrushchoy as saying that Soviet industry aimed to produce 35m. tons of mineral fertiliser in 1965 and 100m, tons in 1970. ‘Yeathar conditions this year had been unfavourable, "We found ourselves in a rather difficult position and must draw the necessary conclusions,™“he added.
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