Tabi PEASANTS i e 7 \ND INDUSTRIE State Farm UJSATION IN THE S01Cooperative (Collective) SD Farm ^IET UNION 61Personal nail Holdings 1. Output Value (Rb.m.) 81.00 80.10 58.60 2. Productive Assets Value (Rb. bn.) 161.20 139.10 31.10 3. Area Cutivated (m. ha) 379.30 171.60 8.11 4. Workforce M.) 12.0 13.0 2.7 5. Output Value/ha. (Rb). 0.21 0.47 7.22 6. Asset Vale/ha. (Rb). 424.99 810.61 3834.77 7. Workers/lOha. 3.16 7.58 33.29 8. Outut Value/worker (Rb.) 6.75 6.16 21.70 9. Assts Value/worker (Rb.) 13.43 10.70 11.52 10. Area/worker, ha 31.61 13.20 3.00 Source: Items I to 4 from Kuznetsova (1988). 5-10 are derived. ings fall in a different category since their output structure differs markedly with a high proportion of high-valued vegetables and livestock products). Prospects In other socialist countries like China and Vietnam which switched to systems of household contracts a decade ago, the price reform was an important adjunct of the new policy and immediately raised the incomes of 70 per cent of the population while stimulating production. The agricultural prices question in the Soviet Union however is a thorny one because over three-quarters of the population would be immediately adversely affected by the raising of agricultural prices. (Since there is already a very large subsidy on the basic food items going to non-rural consumers, raising of producers* prices would inevitably imply raising of prices to consumers). For all the talk of price reforms no steps have been taken in this direction so far, largely for this reason. In the light of the relative lack of enthusiasm displayed so far (for understandable reasons) by collective farmers for the proposed long leases of land (except in C.Asia), and the difficulties attendant on price reforms, it would be fair to say that no coherent and credible strategy has as yet emerged in the Soviet Union for tackling the undoubtedly serious problems of lagging agricultural productivity. The danger is that a series of ad hoc measures may now be undertaken under the pressures of implementing an abstract idea of perestroika, which are unlikely to make a decisive impact on the problem.