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It is plagued as well by an inefficient bureaucracy that tends to be more skillful at padding its returns than increasing crop yields. Moscow's Ministry of Agriculture, said Khrushchev last week, remains exactly as it was in 1894, except that instead of three Deputy Ministers it now has 14. Russia has 48 million farm workers—nearly half its total labor force —and is still desperately short of hands.
The U.S., by contrast, has one-seventh as many farm workers, only 65% as much crop land, and 37 million fewer mouths to feed than Russia, but has a 60% greater output. Says a top British economist: "In agriculture, Russia is at best only the most developed of the underdeveloped countries.''
* Its chief prophet was Vasily Robertovich Williams, a Moscow-born scientist of Welsh descent, who sold the scheme to Stalin as a way to skimp on fertilizer. Stalin rejected Williams' more radical theory: that Russian farm machinery should be horse-drawn or hung from cranes, since heavy tractors would ruin the soil's substructure. Snorted Khrushchev as he recalled the scheme: "How should the cranes be suspended? From airships?"
* Although the book of that name, by U.S. Economist Kenneth Galbraith, is a highly critical study of U.S. values, it has not been published in Russia. Said Galbraith, now U.S. Ambassador to India, of Khrushchev's allusion: "It shows that he is coming into touch with some of the best literature."