ABSTRACT
The soviet agriculture after collectivization has never been able to meet domestic consumer demand. Total global output of Soviet agriculture, although growing over the long term at a respectable annual average rate of 2.3 percent, began to lag more and more behind consumer demand, and by 1984 it exceeded the population growth of the preceding seven years by a mere 0.5 percent per year. The wage sum is derived from nominal average wages and the number of wage earners. The 1978 record was followed by a series of disappointing harvests, which are mirrored in the statistics only of aggregate global production, but also of the physical volume of the main crops and livestock products—the two major exceptions being cotton and eggs. The imported grain was essentially for animal feed, even though much of it consisted of hard wheat, which substituted for a portion of domestic low-quality wheat, which thus could be used for feed.
