The History of Corn Cultivation in the USSR and Khrushchev's Maize Campaign

The history of corn in the Soviet Union began in earnest in the mid-1950s. The plenary session of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, held in January 1955, launched a large and systematic effort to spread and develop the cultivation of corn across the country.

The plenum raised, with full sharpness and seriousness, the question of what this crop meant for livestock farming, for the food industry, and for the national economy as a whole. In his report to the plenum, N. S. Khrushchev said: «The value of corn lies in the fact that this single crop solves two tasks at once — replenishing grain reserves and producing good silage from the stalks and cobs of corn». Whereas in 1953 only about 3.5 million hectares were sown with corn in the USSR, by 1961 the area under corn reached nearly 26 million hectares.

Those two figures are worth reflecting on. In eight years the sown area grew almost eightfold. Yet between 1913 and 1940 — a span of 27 years — the area under corn increased only 2.5 times. Never before in the history of agriculture, in any country, had any crop advanced in such giant strides as corn did in the USSR during those years.

Even though a large share of the corn was harvested at the milk-wax ripeness stage and used as livestock feed, the production of fully ripe corn grain rose 6.5 times over the same period. In 1961 the country's collective and state farms produced nearly 1.5 billion poods of corn grain, whereas in 1953 production amounted to only 226 million poods.

The production of grain is the key to solving the livestock problem. When it comes to sharply increasing grain output, corn has no rivals. Average corn yields ranged between 35 and 50 centners per hectare — and these figures do not even refer to record harvests.

It is known that the celebrated Ukrainian corn grower M. E. Ozerny once obtained 224 centners of corn grain per hectare. Ozerny had, and still has, many followers who achieved large grain yields. But corn is valuable to livestock farming not only for its grain. The stalks and leaves of the corn plant also provide a great deal of feed.

Much has been written here in recent times — books, pamphlets, and articles — about the feed value of corn. Less well known is the worth of corn as a food crop, as raw material for the food industry and for industrial processing. Without any exaggeration, it can be said that no other grain crop yields as many different food and technical products as corn.