Washington-U.S.A.:
COFFIN, TRISTAM
WASHINGTON-U.S.A. By Tristram Coffin Agriculture Studies Reds' Food Shortage Reporters sitting stiffly in the huge ornate State Department auditorium all noticed it—the tough, straight line...
...This winter and next spring may decide whether the People's Republic of China can stay in business...
...The reason for Russia's trouble is a gamble that lost...
...Long food lines are also appearing in other satellites...
...Under what conditions might he be deposed...
...Late spring and early summer droughts are frequent and often accompanied by scorching dry winds or sukhovei...
...The searing drought in the north and heavy floods in the costal areas are the worst in 300 years, the Chinese people are told...
...A direct report on July 13 from a Yugoslav correspondent in Peking, Vasil Magdeski, said all food is now rationed in China, as well as cotton products, and that the cost of living has risen sharply...
...3. Food production reached a peak in 1958, a peak China is not likely to reach again for many years...
...Meanwhile, there is increasing evidence building up in Washington that the USSR is not ready or getting ready to fight...
...Khrushchev, who billed himself as a kind of Henry Wallace of Russia, will look like a chump...
...One quart of milk costs the equivalent of 67 cents, and one pound of sugar costs about 75 cents...
...As a sidelight on this, the First Secretary of the Soviet Embassy in Washington a few years ago was being questioned by a Unitarian youth conference on the mechanics of his Government...
...In fact, in 1959 China shipped $450 million worth of rice to the USSR in return for machinery...
...It was a rough trampling of the centuries-old traditions of the Chinese peasants, turning them from workers into numbers in a great semi-military regiment that moves from place to place with no chance to put down roots...
...There was no bantering, no sudden flashes of the old smile at last week's press conference...
...In 1960, 148 million acres, more than half the cultivable land, was damaged, 49-64 million acres seriously...
...It is reported, too, that he was personally investigating incredible tales of mismanagement and theft on a massive scale...
...This, as the USSR predicted, partially from its own experiments, removed incentives and cut down production...
...A few days ago, a Chinese statement revealed that "The natural catastrophes—floods in large areas, unprecedented droughts, typhoons, hailstorms, contamination by disease— are continuing for the third year and have caused considerable loss, particularly in agriculture, and also have affected some branches of light industry...
...Russia faces no such excrutiating problem, but two bad years in the Virgin Lands means there will be less to eat...
...Winter wheat cannot be grown in wide stretches...
...The fall sown winter wheat crop is particularly poor...
...Lazar Volin, the Agriculture Department's knowledgeable Russian expert, the Soviets have not been able to boost production per acre in many years of trial...
...This is why it recently used its scarce credits to purchase 4-5 million tons of grain...
...By Tristram Coffin Agriculture Studies Reds' Food Shortage Reporters sitting stiffly in the huge ornate State Department auditorium all noticed it—the tough, straight line of the President's jaw, the somber look in his eyes, his hands always in motion behind the lectern...
...More food demands more acres...
...Forty-nine million acres were "seriously affected...
...They thought they had licked the farm problem and could turn to heavy industry...
...This is a bad crop year, too...
...If the spring crop is again bad, one of the worst catastrophe's in man's history will unfold...
...Cotton coupons will provide only 40 inches per person per year...
...According to Dr...
...The North Vietnamese Minister of Agriculture, in a June 29 appeal to "carry on urgent work in the rice fields," said, "The situation is unsatisfactory...
...Thus Khrushchev, who is a master propagandist, if not so good a farmer, pushed the Virgin Lands program with great ballyhoo...
...Agriculture's need for investment capital, labor, fertilizer, feed and equipment was largely ignored...
...It is doubtful that the rice shipments are continuing, however...
...The Government's year-end report said that in 1959 some 100 million acres, or more than a third of the cultivable land, was scourged by natural hazards...
...2. China has 15 million new mouths to feed each year...
...Bulgaria is trying to buy grain in Australia...
...The monthly rations of cereals, when it is available, is about 31 pounds, meat about 7 ounces and sugar about one pound, while milk is given in limited quantity only to children under two years of age...
...The real crisis will descend on China this winter and next spring...
...The critical situation in China, which has already produced extreme belt-tightening, large scale malnutrition and edema, and some famine, has four causes: 1. The Peking government has been trying to blame everything on the weather...
...A sample of the kind of word which gets back to Moscow was the retort of the Soviet Ambassador at a private party in Washington the other day...
...The frost-free season in Siberia and Kazakhstan is quite short, and there is a constant threat of late spring and early autumn frosts...
...A million farm workers, 200,000 tractors and 75,000 huge combines were shipped to the Virgin Lands...
...For two years, 1959 and 1960, drought and dust storms have swept millions of acres of the Virgin Lands, and Khrushchev himself admits 1961 is not a good year...
...The 1958 breakthrough in rice, corn, cotton and tobacco came after years of hunger and austerity and apparently went to the heads of the Peking authorities...
...an insistent boy asked...
...IN A sprawling, shoe-box type building far off the beaten path for intelligence operatives, scholars in shirt sleeves are amassing hard facts on this Communist calamity...
...In Russia, no one will starve this winter...
...Peking was going to show the world, and Russia too, how to leap forward...
...4. The commune- system was adopted after the good crops of 1958, despite cautionary words from Moscow...
...Fruit trees are in peril from killing frost...
...But the internal transportation system is highly inadequate for handling large additional traffic in bulky supplies, and the ghastly specter of famine destroying millions in interior areas is very real...
...Department of Agriculture experts, the worst is yet to come...
...He adds that an "irregular supply of raw materials" has cut down production in light industries...
...Behind this strategy of bringing maximum pressure on Russia to back down in Germany is the decision that Premier Nikita Khrushchev must be jolted into realization that he has gone too far in his taunts, that the West can stand just as close to the fire as he...
...Yet a more sophisticated people, demanding more and more a higher standard of living, will find meat and grains scarce...
...John F. Kennedy is completely absorbed in the drama over Berlin...
...The First Secretary replied, as if mentioning the impossible, "This might happen if the 'Virgin Lands' program was not a success...
...it can't get farm labor...
...He recently spent some weeks away from Moscow in the agricultural areas exhorting the peasants to raise their sights...
...East Germany has an additional headache...
...But the 90 million acres involved, which are located in Siberia and southeast Russia, are in large part marginal lands...
...Incidentally, Russia has not been able to furnish China with grain...
...Cuba started lard rationing July 20th, and meat and fish shortages are admitted in Cuban broadcasts...
...And the Communist reputation will take a nose dive if it cannot provide a good dinner for its own people after all these years...
...In addition, the rainfall is scanty and unevenly distributed...
...In addition, the enitre Communist Empire, including such new recruits as North Vietnam and Cuba, is facing serious food shortages...
...Ambassador Mikhail Menshikov, who has the bland manner of a department store floor walker, said he was sure the United States would never fight over Berlin, that he knew many Americans and they assured him of this...
...Defections to the West have badly hit its manpower supply...
...Khrushchev's big push on the Virgin Lands robbed the Ukraine and Caucusus of labor and equipment, and this, in turn, has prevented European Russia from increasing its yield...
...The winds which spread the monsoon waters far inland into the wheat producing areas of the north weakened in 1959, and almost all the rain was dumped on the coast...
...He maintained that Khrushchev was not a dictator, but was chosen by a majority of the Central Committee, and could be deposed by the same group...
...One explanation offerred is a mysterious change in the wind pattern...
...And, according to these U.S...
...he is determined to win, and is exhibiting a mastery of psychological warfare that no one but Richard Nixon would have thought possible...
...Thus, in the three years of calamity, the population has grown by 45 million...
...The Yugoslav observer ascribes the Chinese food shortage to inherited low productivity, natural disasters, accelerated construction and heavy industry which "have not only absorbed tens of millions of peasants who were more than needed in agriculture, but also the major part of the financial and materials means," and hostility to the communes...
...Khrushchev seems to be involved in a struggle to maintain his power: He has been conducting widespread purges which have already affected some 43 members of the Central Committee, and his recent speeches throughout the provinces have revealed general dissatisfaction with agricultural production, housing and consumer goods...
...East Germany is already rationing some food...
...Part of Russia's trouble—and this has spread to Eastern Europe which has ceased to export food in great quantities—is that the Communist system of denying incentives to individual farmers simply has not worked...
...He is responsible for a dazzling display of toughness and olive branch— leaked stories, well-timed statements, words from Capitol Hill, even photographs of himself with General Maxwell Taylor and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara—all designed to give the impression that Washington has cocked the gun, but won't shoot unless it has to...
Vol. 44 • July 1961 • No. 29
