Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Map of Soviet Russia showing major hydropower sites
- 1 Challenge of the third generation of Soviet power
- 2 Building authority around a new agricultural policy
- Part I Advice and dissent in the shaping of Brezhnev's agricultural and environmental programs
- Part II Implementation of the Brezhnev programs
- 7 Loosening the grip of old priorities: the long struggle against hydropower
- 8 The new environmental program: do the Soviets really mean business?
- 9 Slow gains at a high price: the frustrations of reclamation
- 10 Carrying out a third-generation program with second-generation methods
- 11 Conclusion: lessons of the Brezhnev policies and the future of reform
- Notes
- Index
9 - Slow gains at a high price: the frustrations of reclamation
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 August 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Map of Soviet Russia showing major hydropower sites
- 1 Challenge of the third generation of Soviet power
- 2 Building authority around a new agricultural policy
- Part I Advice and dissent in the shaping of Brezhnev's agricultural and environmental programs
- Part II Implementation of the Brezhnev programs
- 7 Loosening the grip of old priorities: the long struggle against hydropower
- 8 The new environmental program: do the Soviets really mean business?
- 9 Slow gains at a high price: the frustrations of reclamation
- 10 Carrying out a third-generation program with second-generation methods
- 11 Conclusion: lessons of the Brezhnev policies and the future of reform
- Notes
- Index
Summary
Geography favors Soviet agriculture much less than it does Western Europe or the United States. Rainfall is inadequate and undependable over twothirds of the Soviet agricultural area. Hence one of the principal aims of the Brezhnev agricultural program is not only to increase crop yields but also to stabilize them against drought. To an extraordinary degree, the new agricultural policy emphasizes reclamation and especially irrigation. For more than a decade, in fact, reclamation has been the fastest-growing category of capital investment in the Soviet economy. Allocations of capital in irrigation, drainage, and other forms of land improvement have doubled in each of the last three five-year plans. More than 32 billion rubles were invested for these purposes during the decade 1965–75, and the pace has grown steadily each year. By the Tenth Five-Year Plan (1976–80), scheduled capital investment for reclamation and land improvement had reached 40 billion rubles, compared with 0.58 billion rubles in 1960. Soviet investment in irrigation is now the largest in the world. Whereas traditionally it had been focused on Central Asian cotton, it has now shifted decisively to the production of grain in the Ukraine and the southern regions of Russia. This means the massive development of a delicate agricultural technology in an area where it had been little used before.
More stable harvests in the Soviet Union would have important consequences for the West. In recent years, droughts in Russia and Kazakhstan have been one of the major uncertainties in Western grain markets, as sudden and massive purchases by the Soviet Union have played havoc with world prices.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Reform in Soviet PoliticsThe Lessons of Recent Policies on Land and Water, pp. 123 - 134Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1981