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.
“V.M.”23 pages
Approved for Release: 2019/07/19 C05210421 gross basis by eliminating the discounts and seed deductions from crop output. Gross livestock output is derived by eliminating the feed deduction. We then compared our index and the input-output tables for 1) the share of gross crop output used for feed, 2) the share of gross crop output used for seed, and 3) the proportion of feed from the crop sector in the gross value of livestock output. The results are summarized below: Percent 1966 1972 Soviet CIA Soviet CIA Share of gross crops used 28.3 16.7 23.7 20.5 for feed Share of crops used for 8.8 6.8 9.6 6.8 seed Crop-sector feed as a 23.9 12.7 19.7 12.6 share of gross livestock output The results of the comparison are consistent with known differences between the Soviet and CIA in- dexes, and suggest that our estimates of seed and feed use are reasonable. Considering the different compo- nents of the two indexes, the comparisons are fairly close. The rise in the share of seed use between 1966 and 1972 in the Soviet data may reflect a rise in seeding rates. We have already acknowledged that our use of a constant seeding rate probably is not accurate. Although both comparisons for feed shares indicate that our index understates feed use relative to Soviet measurements, the disparity between the shares narrowed between 1966 and 1972. This result is obtained partly because our crop index does not include hay and other feed produced and used entirely within agriculture. These feeds have increased more slowly than grain, and are a declining share of feed use. The share of grain, which is included in the CIA index, has risen. We show a rising share of crop output devoted to feed use and a constant share of livestock output consisting of feed inputs. Soviet data, on the other hand, show these shares dropping. How- ever, this trend may be due to lack of comparability between the 1966 and 1972 input-output tables.‘°‘ It is more likely that these shares remained constant or rose between 1966 and 1972 than declined. In any case these comparisons should be regarded as general indications of the shares and not as precise measures. Intertemporal comparisons of the shares are especially tentative. VII. Sensitivity Tests To test the sensitivity of the index of Soviet agricul- tural production to various estimating procedures, we calculated several variants of the index by altering quantities and price weights. In general, procedures that raise the value of livestock sector output relative to crops, should raise the growth rate of net agricul- tural output, except in 1971-79 when growth in livestock output slowed significantly. Overall growth of farm output should drop when the relative share of the crop sector is raised. In any event, the index is generally insensitive to the tests we applied. None of the modifications had a material effect on the growth rates for the 1951-79 period as a whole. The results of the tests are presented in tables 7 and 8 in terms of the changes in growth rates and in shares of livestock products and crops in total output. To rank the sensitivity tests in order of their effect on the index, we calculated an average absolute percentage difference to measure the deviation of agricultural output under the sensitivity tests from the original '°‘ There is some evidence that the USSR‘s definition of sales by the crop sector to animal husbandry underwent a change between construction of the 1966 and the 1972 input-output tables. Sales by the flour and bread sector to animal husbandry are inexplicably low in the 1966 input-output table compared with the 1959 and 1972 tables. The hypothesis is that the crop sector sold material inputs directly to animal husbandry in 1966 rather than to the flour and bread sector for subsequent processing and resale to animal hus- bandry as was the case in 1972. Research on this subject has not been completed, but if the hypothesis proves correct,_ the shares for gross crops used for feed and crop sector feed as a share of livestock output as reflected in input-output tables are overstated in 1966 relative to 1972. 275 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 under it. 399 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.