And, interestingly,
it wasn't only private peasants who were hoarding grain.
One of the big problems
that the government pointed to at the time,
for the lack of procurement of the grain surpluses,
was hoarding.
If peasants produced a lot of grain, but then they hid it in their cellar,
then this prevented the government from procuring enough grain
to fulfill the planned targets.
However, it wasn't only individual peasants.
There were several problems, major problems,
that prevented the procurement,
and that included wagons full of rotting wheat,
and lack of storage, and transport, and other facilities.
But there was also the problem of hoarding grain
or hiding their stores away.
The kolkhozy and sovkhozy -
those are the collective farms and the state farms -
when they were alarmed
at the amount of grain collection that were being demanded,
they hid their stores,
and they were actually the worst offenders in fulfilling their quotas.
But, again, the problem of the lack of storage and transport
were continually remarked upon by the collective farmers and peasants.
There were rotting grain in railways,
in places where it had not been delivered to the state,
and this was a major part of the grain-fulfillment problem.
Transcriber: Michel Smits Reviewer: Maurício Kakuei Tanaka