The live stock of our peasant farmers is largely degenerate. There is urgent need for an improvement in the breed. Such pedigree cattle as still remain in Russia are at the present time concentrated on the soviet estates and the soviet dairy-farms and stud-farms. The State will be able to give great assistance to the peasants in this matter of stock raising by the organisation of pairing stations on every soviet farm which has pedigree stock, and by the systematic distribution of thoroughbred males to pairing stations in every district.
Many of our peasants are still ignorant in respect of some of the most fundamental and important agricultural questions. It is evident, therefore, that the diffusion of a wider knowledge of these matters cannot fail to lead to improvements in the working of the land. In addition to giving lectures upon agricultural topics, which it is the duty of the soviet experts to deliver at various centres, brief courses of lectures must be given at the soviet farms. The farms will have model fields for demonstration purposes, will organise agricultural exhibitions, will distribute popular literature dealing with agricultural subjects, etc.
In addition to diffusing agricultural knowledge, the Soviet Power must directly provide expert assistance to the peasants. In view of the present scarcity of experts, the mobilisation of the entire personnel will achieve a useful result in this way, that the expert, whose services were in former days placed exclusively at the disposal of the great landlords, will now be made available to the peasants. Furthermore, the Soviet Power must take extensive measures to train agricultural experts from among the ranks of the peasants. Besides increasing the number of agricultural courses of lectures and the number of agricultural schools, the best method of achieving this end in the immediate future will be by the provision of special courses for the most gifted members of the communes and artels. In this way a vanguard of trained agriculturists can be recruited from the peasants’ own ranks.