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p Comrades! Permit me to dwell on some questions of economics in agriculture. The experience of recent years has shown that the principle of purchase of agricultural products based on stable plans and material incentives towards selling grain over and above the plan has been entirely justified. Stable plans combined with purchases over and above the plan makes for fuller satisfaction of the country’s requirements of foodstuffs and raw materials and ensures the necessary economic conditions for a steady rise in collective- and state-farm production.

p The Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the CPSU considers that this principle should be maintained in the future.

p For the collective and state farms to be better able to see the prospects of economic development, to plan their production well and to work out a set of agronomic, organisational, technical and other measures, it is advisable to determine in good time the stable plans of purchases of grain and other produce over the forthcoming five-year period.

p The Political Bureau submits to the plenary meeting for consideration the proposal to maintain for the coming fiveyear-plan period (1971-75) the stable plan of state purchases of grain at approximately the same volume as was set for the present five-year period with corrections, whenever necessary, for republics, territories and regions.

p It is advisable to set the plan for rice purchases separately. 133 Since we shall be putting new irrigated lands into service every year for rice-growing, this plan must apparently be an annually rising one.

p Should the plenary meeting of the Central Committee consider all these suggestions acceptable, the Council of Ministers of the USSR can be asked to draft and submit the plans for purchases of agricultural produce for the whole country and for the Union Republics in accordance with the accepted principles.

p In the republics, territories, regions and districts it will take probably about a year to work out the purchase plans and give them to the farms. Thus, at the beginning of 1970 each farm will have an approved stable plan of agricultural produce purchases for the 1971-75 period.

p The planning and agricultural agencies and collective and state farms, when working out plans for the future five- yearplan period, must take the growth reserves of production more fully into account and study the questions of farm specialisation. Specialisation without a doubt is the true way of enhancing the effectiveness of agricultural production, and it must be carried out more actively. Of course, there can be no stereotype in this matter; local conditions and the positive experience gained in a number of regions of the Russian Federation, the Ukraine and other republics must be taken into account. The Union and republican ministries for agriculture and the research institutes must give greater attention to the study and generalisation of experience in specialisation.

p Apart from the stable plan, the state will continue to purchase considerable amounts of grain and other produce over and above the plan. As you know, extra pay amounting to 50 per cent of the basic purchase price of wheat and some other grain crops has been fixed in order to encourage collective and state farms to increase the production of grain and its sale to the state over and above the plan. This arrangement provides an incentive for farms, promotes growth of production, is simple and comprehensible for the collective farmers and state-iarm workers.

p Many comrades suggest that the established system of encouraging grain purchases over and above the plan should be extended to some other agricultural products. This suggestion is worth considering. Such a powerful economic lever for increasing production and purchases of agricultural produce 134 should be widely utilised. If this proposal is approved, the agencies concerned should be instructed to work out such a system taking into account present practices.

p Suggestions are coming in from the local areas that part of the funds received by the state farms in the form of increments on the basic price for above-plan produce should be used for additional encouragement for state-farm workers, specialists and farm managers. In our view these suggestions deserve consideration and should be supported. Such a system will promote still greater labour activity on the part of statefarm workers. As for the collective farms, according to the Rules, they settle such questions in accordance with the view of general meetings of collective farmers.

p Some remarks on the prices of agricultural produce. The purchase prices fixed after the March Plenary Meeting cover costs for most collective and state farms and enable them to have accumulations for expanded reproduction. The Political Bureau is of the opinion that for the immediate period ahead the existing purchase prices should be on the whole maintained. But some corrections should apparently be introduced. In the first place, prices for vegetables, cotton and poultry meat should be readjusted. There should be a greater incentive for collective and state farms to sell high-quality agricultural produce. The zonal price differentiation should be improved in respect of individual products.

p The question of expenses incurred by farms in connection with acquiring tractors, mineral fertilisers and other materials and equipment should be considered. These expenses are much higher for farms situated at a distance from the supplying plant or the station depots. Apparently, collective and state farms should be placed in equal conditions as regards expenses incurred in acquiring materials and equipment.

p There must be a further improvement also in the system of taxation of collective farms. There are suggestions that it would be more correct to have a differentiated scale of taxation depending on the farm’s profitability level.

p The State Planning Committee of the USSR and the agricultural and finance bodies must study all these questions together with the scientists and submit their proposals.

p At the March Plenary Meeting of the Central Committee and later at the 23rd Party Congress, we found that there was no justification for the desire to transform many collective farms into state farms. It was established that the task 135 was not to replace one form of socialist economy in the countryside by another, but to consolidate and develop in every way both the collective-farm and state-farm forms of organisation of social production. Nevertheless, requests for the transformation of a large number of collective farms into state farms still continue to come in.

p Over the period from 1957 to 1967 the number of state farms in our country more than doubled—from 5,900 to 12,800. Permanently allotted to them were 292 million hectares of agricultural land. In the state farms is concentrated 43 per cent of our country’s cultivated area. State-farm production, as you see, is an enormous factor in our economy.

p And yet the ministries for agriculture of the USSR and the Union republics, and the local authorities do not pay due attention to the state farms. Many of these farms are working unsatisfactorily and make a poor showing economically and financially.

p All this obliges us to pay the most serious attention to the work of the state farms in order to make them all highly productive and highly profitable enterprises. This applies first of all to the leading agencies in the RSFSR and the Kazakh SSR, where two-thirds of the country’s state farms are concentrated.

p The large scale of reclamation work makes great demands on the water economy bodies. We did right to create the Ministry of Melioration and Water Conservancy of the USSR. In a short space of time the Ministry and its local bodies have carried out a good deal of work in setting up water economy and building organisations and strengthening their staffs. However, not everything in the Ministry’s work is organised as smoothly as it should be. Responsibility for the quality of water economy works and proper exploitation of reclamation systems is low. There is still no clear-cut delimitation of functions between water economy and agricultural bodies.

p Further improvement is also necessary in the work of Soyuzsclkhoztekhnika. From the localities come warnings of serious shortcomings in production and technical servicing of collective and state farms. Suggestions are made that Soyuzselkhoztekhnika should be charged with organising centralised deliveries of machines, spares, building and other materials direct to the farms with its own transport and should take on itself the task of making up full sets of 136 equipment and installing it so that collective and state farms should receive equipment, so to say, in working order.

p The question is also rightly raised of improving the organisation of purchases of agricultural produce, particularly vegetables and fruit.

p Questions arise in connection with the wide dispersal of the production of machines and equipment for the farms over various ministries and departments. For instance, the production of equipment for animal husbandry is handled by more than 150 enterprises, of which only 30 come under the Ministry of Tractor and Agricultural Machinery Building, while the others are under 13 other ministries or departments.

p Such dispersion seriously delays technical progress in the mechanisation of animal husbandry and fodder production, since many of the enterprises involved haven’t the necessary qualified staffs of specialists in this field and actually do not work to improve the equipment which they produce. Orders for small quantities of machines work out expensive for the enterprises concerned and this leads to an increase in the cost of machines. The same situation has arisen in the production of reclamation equipment, which is scattered over 11 ministries and departments.

p The Political Bureau of the Central Committee and the Government, taking into account the exchange of opinion at the present plenary meeting, must consider all these questions and take the necessary measures.

p As you see, comrades, we are faced with no few tasks in the field of agriculture. It is not only a question of the further development of an important branch of the national economy. In the final analysis it is a matter of solving important problems concerned with the socio-economic and cultural development of Soviet society. The raising of productive forces in the countryside will make for still greater improvement in the material welfare of all working people and will open new and wide opportunities for cultural growth in the countryside. At the same time, the realisation of the measures outlined will lead to a change in the very character of the rural population’s labour, to its increasing transformation into a variety of industrial labour. In following this course, we shall gradually accomplish one of the cardinal tasks of communist construction—the task of obliterating the essential distinctions between town and country.

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p Our industry is called upon to play a great role in implementing the proposed measures for the material and technical re-equipment of agriculture. But it must be borne in mind that further development in industry itself will depend a great deal on progress in agriculture, on the extent to which the towns are supplied with raw materials and foodstuffs, and the ability of the countryside to provide the factories with new working-class reinforcements.

p As you see, comrades, all the measures outlined are inspired by a single desire—to raise the standard of living of the Soviet people still higher, and to strengthen still more the alliance between the working class and the peasantry and the might of our socialist Motherland.

p The great tasks in agriculture naturally cannot be accomplished by the workers in that branch alone. Broad chemisation, land reclamation and overall mechanisation can be carried out only by the joint efforts of the rural toilers and the working class, of the scientists and the agricultural specialists, of the engineers and technicians in industry—in a word, all the Soviet people.

p In mobilising the working people to fight for a new advance in agriculture, the chief role belongs to the Party organisations. Naturally mention must be made first of the rural district Party committees, the primary Party organisations and the Communists working in collective and state farms. More than once the Party has set them big tasks and they, in the face of numerous difficulties, ably accomplished those tasks. The army of Communists in the countryside now numbers more than 5 million persons. The activities of rural Party organisations must be aimed at raising bumper crops, achieving a high productivity of animal husbandry, stepping up scientific and technological progress and attaining high labour productivity.

p The forward line in the drive to carry out the decisions of our plenary meeting must be occupied also by the Party organisations in industry. I have in mind in the first place the Party organisations at enterprises of the agricultural machinery, tractor, automobile and chemical industries, those in the building organisations, in the scientific research and all other institutions connected in one way or another with agriculture. Need it be said how much depends on their fruitful work!

p The proper selection, training and education of personnel 138 has always been and remains a decisive condition of all our successes. Our cadres are doing a big job. Life demands of them profound knowledge, particularly in the fields of economics, science and technology. Therefore a most important task of Party organisations is systematic work to train and retrain key personnel and specialists at schools, courses and seminars and by the use of other forms for improving their knowledge and experience. Care should be taken in good time that the higher educational establishments, technical colleges, and vocational schools train specialists with higher and secondary qualifications as well as in the mass professions for agriculture in fully sufficient numbers. There should be a long-term concrete plan for the training and retraining of these staffs.

p Leading workers and collective farmers should be more widely promoted to key positions in Party, state and economic bodies. Women should be promoted more energetically. There are still very few of them in the countryside among farm managers, team-leaders, and managers of animal farms and sections. Women should also be more actively trained as rural mechanisation specialists. In general, greater care must be shown in providing better and more favourable conditions for the work and living conditions of women in the countryside.

p One of the most important questions of Party-political work in the countryside is work with youth. The decisions of our plenary meeting and our agricultural plans open up for youth, in the town as well as in the countryside, new horizons, a wide field of activity. You realise, comrades, how many agricultural specialists, engineers and technicians, machine operators, agrochemists, reclamation workers, builders and other skilled personnel are required to carry out the programme for the further development of agriculture set forth in this report.

p The Party counts on our young people making their fit contribution to the development of agriculture. Having mastered the fundamentals of science, the young people, with their exuberant energy and love of knowledge, their responsiveness to all that is new, are the future of our countryside. For their education, for work with them, neither time nor energy must be spared.

p We must give yet greater scope to political work by Party organisations among the masses. Appealing to the people, 139 soliciting their support is the tried and tested method of our Party, the true way to attain the set goal. Political work must be closely related to life. It must really fire people with* enthusiasm, inspire them to fine feats of labour. We must raise still higher the role of socialist emulation, give it our constant attention, find new and interesting forms of emulation and give wider publicity to foremost people in production. An important role in this should be played not only by Party, but also by trade union organisations and our press.

p To work among the masses is to show concern for people, for the amenities of their daily-life circle, and for raising the level of rural life as a whole. Not a little has been done in this direction recently. But for a number of reasons, among them insufficient attention, many problems concerned with the cultural and welfare services of the rural population still remain unsolved. To develop to the utmost and satisfy more fully the spiritual and everyday requirements of the working people in the countryside—such is the lofty duty of all Party organisations, state bodies, trade unions, YCL organisations and the whole Soviet public.

p In the work of the collective and state farms, in all aspects of rural life there are no questions which do not come within the scope of our tasks. We must raise still higher the level of work by our Party organisations, from the Central Committee down to the regional, town and district Party committees, and the primary Party organisations. Our agricultural development plans are realistic not only because they are based on material possibilities, on the level of economic, scientific and technological progress attained in our country. They depend to an enormous extent on the well-arranged organisational and political work of the Party and all its detachments among the masses, among the people.

p Comrades! The questions of further progress in agriculture before this plenary meeting of the Central Committee are of tremendous importance for the state. The meeting’s decisions will be the programme for our practical work.

Relying on the support of the Soviet people, the Party will devote all its efforts to ensure that our agriculture will take new steps forward and fully satisfy the continually growing requirements of our people and our state. (Applause.)