Agro-Industrial Complex, a system of branches of the socialist economy embracing agriculture and industries serving it and bringing its produce to the consumer. It includes those supplying the countryside with farm machinery, fertilizers, building materials and other means of production, and those providing technical services. The agro-industrial complex also includes branches in charge of procurements, transportation, storage and processing, and sale of agricultural produce (transport, the processing industry, trade, etc.). A distinction should be drawn between the national and regional agro-industrial complexes. The former embraces the system of pertinent branches on the national scale, while regional complexes, which consist of agriculture and the industries, transport and trade serving it, are formed within republics, regions and districts. Contacts between agriculture and the other sectors of the economy have always existed, but the establishment of the agro-industrial complex has raised them to a new level, making the progress of agriculture itself increasingly dependent on the state of the other constituents, the level of their development becoming a determinative factor for any further progress of agriculture. Technical re-equipment of Soviet agriculture, its growing specialisation and many other issues depend on the advance of related industries, transport and trade. At present, all the branches mentioned above constitute a single whole. The principal purpose of the agro-industrial complex is to ensure a stable supply of food and agricultural raw materials for the country. To make the Food Programme work, the Party’s agrarian policy emphasises centralised planning, balanced development of all branches of the complex, consolidation of its material and technical basis, closer economic ties and a more efficient interaction between the branches in order to increase agricultural production, and better organised storage, transportation, processing and sales of its output. Planned, balanced development of all branches of the agro-industrial complex 15 is the foundation for agriculture’s growth into a highly efficient section of the economy and for an increase in the final results attained by all related branches (see Final Results of Production Activity).