Appendices to chapter 5: H Agricultural production

Summary

Agricultural production is estimated mainly from product series in physical units, valued in rubles at 1937 prices, plus an allowance for net investment in livestock, but several minor complications arise on the way.

The product series are shown in table H.1. Official data are used except in the case of vegetables, for which entries under 1941–4 are missing. Table H.2 shows how the gap is filled; the area sown to vegetables is known from official data, and the trend of vegetable yields between 1940 and 1945 is interpolated on potato yields.

Net investment in livestock is estimated in table H.3 from figures for stocks on 1 January of each year, but assumptions must be made about the division of stock losses in the early years of the war between capital losses and disinvestment, since the latter, but not the former, is subtracted from agriculture's GNP contribution. A distinction is made between trends in the occupied and unoccupied regions. I count the decline in stocks in the occupied regions, less evacuated stocks, as a capital loss; I also assume that all net investment took place in the unoccupied regions, and that this net investment can be measured by stock increases less a contribution attributable to evacuated stocks which diminished through time.

Products (table H.1), plus net investment (table H.3), multiplied by 1937 prices (table H.4), give real gross output at 1937 prices (table H.5).