------------------------------------------------------ Plan[*] 1960 1964 1965 1966 1970 ------------------------------------------------------- Horses 49 44 44 44 n.a. Mules 17 20 20 21 n.a. Donkeys 57 60 60 60 n.a. Cattle 420 427 424 427 475 Cows 146 157 156 158 n.a. Oxen 100 87 n.a. n.a. 139 Buffalo 7 5 5 5 n.a. Sheep 1,546 1,682 1,637 1,670 1,800 Goats 1,104 1,199 1,175 1,200 1,400 Hogs 130 147 141 142 n.a. Poultry 1,580 1,671 1,722 1,746 3,000 ------------------------------------------------------- n.a.--not available. *Fourth Five-Year Plan (1965-70). Information on livestock numbers is much more sketchy. The dearth of published data and repeated official pronouncements indicate unsatisfactory progress in this farm sector, particularly with regard to the high-priority target for cattle raising. An important cause of this lag has been an acknowledged shortage of fodder. Another major reason has been an officially induced transfer of livestock from individual peasant ownership to the collective and state farms, where it is subject to the much-criticized negligent attitude of the peasants toward state and communal property. About 60 percent of the cattle and sheep and 85 percent of the hogs were kept on state and collective farms in 1969, as against only about 36 and 64 percent, respectively, in 1964. Collective farm managers and local government officials have blamed the fodder shortage on the diversion of pastures and meadows to the production of bread grains. Statistical evidence indicates that the output of feed grains declined by about 40 percent from the mid-1950s to the mid-1960s but that the loss of fodder from grazing lands and meadows was compensated fourfold through increased production of forage crops. The validity of the explanation offered by the farm and village officials was vigorously denied in the theoretical monthly journal of the Party's Central Committee, which attributed the fodder shortage to a failure by collective farmers to adopt improved methods of crop production and to exploit all available fodder resources. In January 1970 all basic Party organizations in farming areas were urged to eliminate distrust and every conservative idea and harmful tendency that stood in the way of the rapid development of cattle raising and to see to it that the existing gap between the collective farms and private plots was gradually eliminated.