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.
“Cooper”25 pages
Approved for Release: 2019/07/19 C05210421 Table 3 USSR: Index of Net Agricultural Production, Selected Years 9 1950 '7 1955 1960 1965 I 119707 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 Grain 48.3 56.4 67.2 66.0 100.0 76.6 120.5 103.3 131.6 97.7 Potatoes 88 .9 66.9 82.2 88.8 100.0 90.4 87.9 86.2 89.3 95.4 Fruits and vegetables 31.8 47.5 59.5 75.8 100.0 115.8 124.0 122.0 127.3 133.7 Technical crops 43.2 56.8 67.5 87.6 100.0 104.4 114.9 118.8 112.0 1 1'1 .9 Net crop output 54.0 57.5 69.6 78.2 100.0 93.2 112.0 106.0 116.2 106.7? Meat 39.1 51.5 70.7 80.3 100.0 122.9 112.5 120.7 126.9 126.8 Milk 42.5 51.8 74.3 87.4 100.0 109.4 108.0 114.4 114.0 112.4 Other livestock products 24.7 47.6 58.3 (including inventory change) 85.6 100.0 58.1 82.7 106.5 97.8 92.1 Net livestock output 38.4 54.1 69.3 86.7 100.0 102.4 101.} 115.3 113.3 109.0 Net agricultural output 45.6 55.6 69.4 82.8 100.0 98.2 106.1 111.0 114.6 107.9 3 l970=l00 commodities, 1971-79 growth rates were less than half of the rates posted for 1951-60.” IV. Evaluation of Official Soviet Statistics The accuracy of the CIA index of agricultural output ultimately depends on the reliability of the Soviet statistics used to construct it. Western observers have long criticized Soviet agricultural statistics for being unavailable, inaccurate, inconsistent over time, or not comparable with Western measures of farm output. In constructing the CIA index of Soviet agricultural production, we have made some adjustments to com- pensate for these deficiencies in Soviet statistics. A. Availability Availability of Soviet statistics is a broader problem than the mere scarcity of data on physical output of commodities. Data on commodity use are also scarce as are the definitions needed to interpret some of the published statistics correctly. The reliability of the ”° Poor weather in 1979 depressed crop growth and thus growth in total agricultural output. If the comparisons were for the period 1971-78, crop output would have grown at an average annual rate of 1.9 percent, and net output at 1.7 percent per year. CIA index is affected more by the absence of statis- tics on the use of farm products for seed, feed, and the like than by a shortage of output data. Although troublesome shortages of production data still exist, more utilization data and definitional material have become available and the accuracy of statistical re- porting may have improved somewhat. Earlier, Western investigators puzzled, for example, over whether milk output statistics were recorded in physical weight or converted to standardized butterfat content. I-low milk fed to calves was reported in output statistics was also ambiguous." Definitional material now available explicitly states that gross output of milk is in physical weight, while procure- ment statistics are in terms of standardized butterfat content.“ The issue of milk fed to calves has also been clarified: milk sucked directly by calves is excluded 1' D. Gale Johnson and Arcadius Kahan, “Soviet Agriculture: Structure and Growth,” Comparisons of the United States and Soviet Economics, U. S. Congress Joint Economic Committee, Washington, D. C., 1959. Nancy Nimitz also discussed this issue. See RM 2326, Soviet Statistics on Meat and Milk Output: A Note on Their Comparability Over Time, Rand Corporation, February, 1959. " Z. G. Tresorukova, Tovarnaya produktsiya sel 'skog0 kh0- zyaystva, Moscow, 1974, p. 103. 260 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.