New Stage in the Management of the Agro-Industrial Complex

V. Miloserdov, New Stage in the Management of the Agro-Industrial Complex. August 1982

Miloserdov’s commentary presents the late-Brezhnev “Food Program” as a managerial turning point for Soviet agriculture, arguing that chronic underperformance stemmed less from investment shortages than from fragmented, department-driven control over food production. The regime’s proposed remedy was to reorganize the entire “agro-industrial complex” as an integrated system, with new coordinating bodies and agro-industrial associations intended to overcome “narrow departmentalism” and make ministries and service organizations answerable for the harvest and the final food supply.

Original Source: Pravda, 6 August 1982.

The Party's present agrarian policy, as we know, originated with the Central Committee's March (1965) plenary session. By intently pursuing the course that It mapped out, the Party has succeeded in providing for the solution of a considerable number of agrarian problems in a relatively short time. Agriculture's productive forces and total output have grown substantially, and energetic efforts have been made to resolve the problems of the countryside's social development ...

These accomplishments could have been even more impressive if the advantages of a planned economy had been utilized more fully, untapped production potential had been put to use more actively, and shortcomings had been combated more persistently.

The chief cause of the difficulties that have arisen, we believe, was that the major reforms in productive forces have not been accompanied by corresponding changes in production relations.

It has become obvious that extensive factors for growth in agro-industrial production have been virtually exhausted ...

During the 1970s, a number of qualitative indices declined even though assets grew, and advanced research capabilities and skilled personnel were available. Out

lays per unit of output produced rose, and the financial situation of many agricultural enterprises worsened.

The functions of economic management of the complex became fragmented, managerial work became narrowly specialized and the management function became isolated, making it impossible to manage food production as a single process.

Organizational disarray developed: Several specialized subdivisions performing the same type of work were set up in each district. Concentration of high-powered specialized machinery and equipment in these subdivisions was supposed to increase the efficiency of capital construction, equipment maintenance, and fertilizer procurement and application, and to gradually free the collective farms and state farms of these functions. However, even those farms that lacked the necessary buildings and equipment and were short of manpower continued to perform most of these operations themselves. Because the financial terms were too burdensome, firms often gave up the services of Selkhoztekhnika [the All-Union Farm Machinery Association], for example, and developed their own repair facilities. At the same time, a substantial proportion of the work the specialized organizations did was for other branches of the economy. The enterprises and organizations that serviced agriculture did not consider themselves responsible for the harvest. They fulfilled and overfulfilled their plans and received large profits even when the collective and state farms' harvests were dwindling and the production of meat, milk and other output was falling.

Narrow departmentalism has undermined the unified system for managing the food production process. For example, only three of the 17 state farms in Tula Province's Lenin District are subordinated to the district farm production administration; the rest are under eight different industrial associations. Confusion in the material and technical supply of collective farms and state farms has become appreciable. For example, tractors and combines have been arriving at specialized farms according to the allocation schedules of the trusts, while farm-machinery attachments and the equipment and supplies needed to perform maintenance have been arriving according to the schedules of the district farm production administration. Lack of coordination in the operations of these organizations has often resulted in certain farms' receiving tractors while other farms receive the ploughs and trailers that go with them, or in a district's plans for the procurement of certain products being increased while the trusts allocate, resources to their farms for the development of other types of farming.

The fact that we are talking in the past tense about all the shortcomings listed above does not mean that they have already been surmounted, by any means ... Major efforts are being made and must continue to be made toward this end, along with efforts to surmount narrow departmentalism and regionalism, antiquated working methods, and inertia and sloth in economic thinking. The creative search for the effective methods for the planned guidance and management of the economy must also continue ...

The decisions of the CPSU Central Committee's May 1982 plenary session, which are notable for their profound scientific grounding, contain a clear-cut System of carefully conceived measures aimed at an upswing in agro-industrial production and at the accomplishment of the USSR Food Program.

Appropriate management bodies are being set up to coordinate the work of the ministries and departments of the agro-industrial complex and their local agencies, enterprises and organizations, to mobilize efforts to make fuller use of resources, and to ensure that the branches of the agro-industrial complex operate in a highly efficient fashion. District agro-industrial associations have functioned in a number of the country's republics for many years. Their example attests to the fact that this form of management is the most acceptable and effective one. It has therefore been deemed advisable that agro-industrial associations be created in all districts, territories, provinces and autonomous republics and that agro-industrial commissions be formed in the Union republics and at the all-Union level ...

Bringing management closer to the production of the end product will enable the administrators of the relevant services to make day-to-day and long-term decisions more effectively and ensure that the appropriate resources are available for the specific steps they take. These conditions will provide realistic ways to increase the economic effectiveness of social production, make judicious use of production resources, decrease losses and upgrade the quality of output ...

Setting the agro-industrial complex apart as an independently planned and managed entity makes possible a better and more effective combination of territorial planning, branch planning, and special program and specific purpose planning. The point of departure for the planning is the end result, which is to provide an uninterrupted supply of food to the country.

Thus, the methodology for drawing up the Food Program contains fundamentally new approaches to planning. The planning reflects a systems approach and is geared to special programs and specific purposes, thereby making it possible to identify priorities for the utilization of capital investments and material resources.

Source: Current Digest of the Soviet Press, Vol. XXXIV, No. 31, September 1, 1982, 1-3