[ECON] Improving Agriculture I.

[u/Penulpipo]

June, 1972

With the Three Year Plan underway, Al Assad has announced his plans to address the unproductiveness of Syrian agriculture. While most agricultural problems carry very standard regional problems (corruption, graft, a barely motivated and educated workforce, et cetera), and are relatively easy to uncover, they are not particularly cheap or easy to solve. This is despite the long-term presence of Soviet planners in economic decision-making, who help the Syrian Government by correcting mistakes in the structure of the collective farms effectively for free. To put it in an illiterate's terms, corruption and graft cannot be simply planned away.

While Al Assad still presents himself as a Socialist on par with Aflaq or even Marx, he is a political operator first and an idealogue last. He recognizes that what he deems "low morale", effectively the unwillingness of farmers to engage with State organizations to improve yield or even outright resistance to policy changes, comes from the fact that farmers' holdings are not profitable. The only reason they have not revolted is due to government subsidies which drain the national budget year after year. To this end, Al Assad has announced the following in a brief radio address to the nation.

The National Marketing Board

The National Marketing Board (NMB) is an organization that will be tasked with helping farmers sell their products at home and abroad. It will essentially serve as a middleman between producers and consumers, all for a small fee for the Syrian state of course. Although the program is voluntary, Al Assad has made public his intentions to expand it in the future once the "current national situation" stabilizes, assuring producers, industry leaders, and farmers that his government will do everything in its hands to assure that their wares are bought at steady market rates and therefore result in profit. He has also, perhaps paradoxically, assured consumers that this will also mean more products available at accessible prices.