Book reviews

the cost of the CAP to the consumer in the form of higher prices and reduced consumption is referred to throughout the book, the reader is not supplied with any estimates of this cost ele- ment. This is a disappointing omission since quantitative estimates are avail- able from a number of sources (although these are referenced).

In writing on the CAP it is unavoid- able that authors find the sand be- neath their feet forever shifting. Thus, although Harris et al probably felt fairly safe in concluding that, as far as reform of the dairy sector is con- cerned, ‘dramatic measures should not be expected (p 105), quotas now look

an odds-on bet as the way forward in reducing the Community’s milk sur- plus, Nevertheless, the book offers an up-to-date account of the workings of the CAP, and rightly makes explicit the role of the food industry in the overall picture. As such it will appeal not only to those whose main concern lies with events at the farm level, but also to those with an interest further down the food chain.

L. J. Hubbard Department of Agricultural Economics

The University of Newcastle Newcastle, UK

Soviet agriculture in crisis THE ECONOMICS OF FEASIBLE SOCIALISM

by Alec Nove

George Allen and Unwin, London, 1983

USSR IN CRISIS The failure of an economic system

by Marshall I. Goldman

W. W. Norton, New York, 1983

PROSPECTS FOR SOVIET AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTION AND TRADE

by Ad Hoc Group on East/West Economic Relations, Committee for Agriculture

OECD, Paris, 1983

Soviet agriculture is in a state of acute crisis, poorly managed and organized. It has shown an inadequate and apparently declining rate of response to the large increase in investments over the last twenty years and to its improved terms of trade, and has been badly supported by its service indus- tries, particularly transport and ferti- lizers. Its problems have been com- pounded by poor weather in 1972, 1975 and in four years back-to-back, 197982.

Real gross agricultural output aver-

aged an annual rate of increase of 3.9% for 196670, then 2.5% to 1975 followed by 1.7% to 1980. Real gross annual output for 1981-83 is unlikely to exceed the average for the previous quinquennium. The trend of real net output for 1970-83 is virtually flat. Recent Soviet analysis suggests that an increment of 100 rubles real gross output required 70 rubles in 1966-70, 89 rubles in 1971-75 and 107 rubles in 197680 (constant 1973 prices for all values).

Total food consumption has in- creased by around a 2% annual rate since 1970, with meat at some 2.5% per year. The gains are substantially less than originally envisaged in the 1976-80 Plan. They have depended almost entirely on imports of grain and livestock products which were made possible by the two outstanding pieces of good fortune in the USSR’s foreign account in the last decade - the increases in energy and gold prices. Table 1 illustrates this.

There have been four principal sets of Kremlin policy reactions to the deteriorating domestic supply situa- tion. First, overall financial incentives, mostly higher prices for official pro- curements but also input subsidies, have been raised substantially since the mid-1970s and by 1980 repre- sented at 37 million rubles almost 40% of the total value of state purchases. Subsequent increases in procurement prices have taken consumer subsidies to around 50 million rubles in 1983,

and there have been large write-offs of bad debts and delays in loan repay- ment owed by farms. This is already an over-travelled road.

Second, some steps have been taken to relate payment of farm workers to the results of the harvest rather than to individual tasks completed, and claims are made that large gains in productivity result. But egalitarian and bureaucratic sensitivities are in- volved and the overall change is prob- ably limited.

Third, since 1978 the status of peasant plots, which have supplied about one quarter of the gross output of Soviet agriculture for many years, has been legitimized in the Soviet Constitution and strengthened by va- rious measures, culminating in 1981 with a decree permitting a contract system to supply feeder animals and feed to peasants who sell the fattened animals back to farms.

The Food Programme approved by the Central Committee of the Com- munist Party of the Soviet Union in May 1982 added one new component in the search for improved efficiency in management and resource alloca- tion, the RAPOs (Regional Agro- Industrial Organizations). Over 3000 RAPOs have been established at the rayon administrative level and some 156 intermediate coordinating units between them and the highest level of agricultural administration. The indi- vidual RAP0 is intended to be a coordinating body for agriculture and its input and marketing industries, ie aiming for the more effective match- ing of activities which in Western agricultures comes from the operation of market forces and from vertical integration arrangements. It has some limited powers to rearrange procure- ment policies, interfarm prices and investments for farms within its orbit. Its council of farm managers, agri- cultural administrators and directors of service industries is intended to improve the bureaucratic planning process.

Alec Nove, Emeritus Professor of Economics at the University of Glas- gow, has written extensively on the Soviet Union for twenty years or more. The Economics of Feasible Socialism is a general analysis of Marx-

172 FOOD POLICY May 1984