Documents / FOIA release
This Joint Committee Print, dated December 8, 1982, gathers studies that the Central Intelligence Agency's Directorate of Intelligence prepared for the Joint Economic Committee of the US Congress. It gives estimates of Soviet gross national product for 1950 to 1980, with indexes of industrial production, agricultural production and consumption, and explains the methods and data behind them. The foreword says official Soviet statistics inflate growth and that the CIA measures offer a more accurate picture. The document contains no UFO material.
“Fuller”2 pages
Approved for Release: 2019/07/19 C05210421 received by all producers.‘ Agricultural commodities are included in the index in the year in which they were produced although some of the commodities may be marketed or consumed in subsequent years. We divide agriculture into two subsectors: crops and livestock. Net production of the crop sector is the value of crop production available for sale outside the crop sector and for direct consumption by farm households—that is, gross crop production minus the value of seed grain and seed potatoes and minus waste elements in grain and sunflower seed production. In theory, waste should be deducted for all crops, but lack of data makes it impossible to estimate these quantities for crops other than grain and sunflower seed. Crops used exclusively within agriculture for feed such as hay, corn for silage, feed roots, and so forth, are not counted. Similarly, to obtain “net” output of the livestock sector, gross output is reduced by animal products used for feed and hatching eggs. When the two sectors are aggregated to measure total net agricultural output, the value of commodities transferred between them for use in the production process is subtracted to avoid double counting. These transfers represent feed produced in the crop sector but consumed by livestock such as grain, potatoes, whole milk, and vegetables. Because hay and other forage crops are not included in crop output, they are not part of these transfers. Data are lacking to estimate transfers such as manure from the livestock sector to crop production. When the two subsector indexes are considered independently, feed is counted as crop output and also is included implicitly in the value of livestock output. In measuring total net output, we subtract the value of crops and whole milk fed as well as hatching eggs from livestock output. Thus, the value of hay and other forage crops is automatically included in net livestock output. The CIA index, then, defines net livestock production as gross output minus a) the value of selected agricultur- al commodities fed to livestock and b) the value of hatching eggs. Because our crop index and feed deduction make no allowance for hay and other forage ‘ The index is a Laspeyres quantity index where H 2 P70,j Qij _ i=1 1,_n_i- Z P10. 1 Qm crops, the value of net livestock output is somewhat overstated relative to the value of net crop output. The value of these feed crops is small, however, and its exclusion does not have a significant effect on the results.’ Below, we define the sample categories in more detail.‘ We touch briefly on waste as it affects each category; a fuller discussion of the waste prob- lem can be found in section V below. Table 1 shows the ruble value and percentage distribution of agricul- tural production in 1970 according to our index. Grain and Potatoes. Grain and potatoes together amount to 60 percent of net crop output. We account separately for nine types of grain: wheat, rye, corn, barley, oats, rice, millet, buckwheat, pulses, and “oth- er grains.” Other grains amounted to less than 1 percent of the value of grain output in 1970.’ The following tabulation shows the value of grain produc- tion in 1970. Wheat and barley together account for over two-thirds of the ruble value of net grain output. While wheat has always been the single most impor- tant grain, barley has been in second place only since the early 1960s. Growth in barley production is associated with the emphasis on rapid expansion of feed grain output. Before then, rye was the second largest grain crop in value terms. g Million Rubles Percent Wheat 7256.0 53.1 Rye 990.5 7.3 Buckwheat 224.0 1.6 Rice 307.4 2.2 Corn for grain 1009.6 7.4 Oats 839.4 6.2 Barley 2282.9 16.7 Millet 138.2 1.0 Pulses 600.9 4.4 _ Other 8.3 0.1 Total 13657.2 100.0 ’ While the CIA index is primarily used to derive value added in agriculture, with some adjustments it can also be used to gauge trends in output of the crop and livestock sectors available to consumers. For this purpose, net crop output is defined as gross output less seed, waste, and grain, potatoes, and vegetables used for feed. Net livestock output is defined as gross output less whole milk fed and eggs for hatching. Redefining the subsectors in this way raises the growth in livestock output and reduces the growth in crop output reflecting the relatively rapid gains made by the Soviet consumer in consumption of livestock products. ‘ Details on the derivation of the quantity data used in the index are presented in appendix A. The derivation of 1970 average realized prices is explained in appendix B. i=1 ’ These include sorghum, spelt, vetch, lupin, seradella and other minor miscellaneous grains. 254 Approved for Release: 2019/07/19 C05210421
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FOIA release, from the cia-readingroom collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. 399 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.