Comment on the Comprehensive Report
(March 15, 1960)

To the Shanghai Bureau, all cooperative [regional] committees, all provincial Party committees, municipal Party committees, and autonomous region Party committees, all departments and Party groups at the central level:

The following 11 reports from Hunan Province concerning thirteen aspects of agriculture are hereby issued to you for reference. This material is well worth reading; it contains some new elements and provides a full picture of agriculture.

Central Committee
March 15, 1960

[I] The thirteen aspects of agricultural production covered in this report are: the water conservancy campaign, the fertilizer accumulation campaign, the campaign to reclaim wasteland and improve soil, arrangements for the sowing plan, the labor force issue, tool reform, the extent to which cadres have gone down to the grassroots, spring-harvest crops, pig production, livelihood arrangements, fishery production, afforestation, and timber production. The report states that after the provincial Party committee issued the slogan "Remove a Thousand Mountains, Open Ten Thousand Li of Rivers" in November last year, Party committee secretaries at all levels took command, and a total of 350,000 cadres and 6 million laborers were mobilized to vigorously carry out water conservancy work. By the end of February this year, 880,000 various water conservancy projects had been repaired or newly built across the province, including 30,000 newly constructed reservoirs, an increase of 66 percent over the reservoirs built in the previous ten years, greatly transforming the province's farmland and water conservancy landscape. In conjunction with the large-scale water conservancy efforts, localities also vigorously built a number of hydroelectric power stations. In terms of fertilizer accumulation, since last winter, localities have vigorously developed fertilizer bases and focused on pig-raising for manure accumulation. During this spring's fertilizer accumulation upsurge, the labor force mobilized reached 7 million people. To date, the province has accumulated approximately 20 billion dan of fertilizer, averaging around 300 dan per mu. Last winter and this spring, the province improved over 8 million mu of low-yield fields that previously produced less than 400 jin per mu, reclaimed 5 million mu of wasteland, and deep plowing conditions were also better than last year. Regarding sowing arrangements, the planned sown area for the whole year is over 100 million mu, striving to achieve an average grain output of 1,000 jin per person across the province. Currently, the labor force engaged in field production has reached 10 million people, accounting for 70 percent of the province's total labor force, and it is estimated that another 700,000 to 800,000 people can be shifted from water conservancy, transportation, and other sectors to agricultural production. This year, the province plans to innovate and popularize nearly 20 million pieces of various new tools, estimated to save 800 to 900 million workdays. Nearly 130,000 cadres from the county level and above have gone down to the grassroots across the province, with an average of one state cadre per production team. They are generally able to eat, live, work, and consult together with the masses, participate in production, lead production, vigorously cultivate high-yield fields, and have strengthened Party-mass relations. For poor and backward teams, all localities have paid special attention to strengthening leadership, with cadres assuming full responsibility to transform their conditions within set timeframes. This year, spring-harvest crops have been treated as a full season of production, handled better than in previous years, and the crops are generally growing well. The annual plan is to raise 40 million pigs, and localities are vigorously focusing on feed and epidemic prevention work, creating many advanced examples of rapid development. Regarding livelihood arrangements, it has been decided to implement the system of "rationing based on individual quotas, assigning targets to households, issuing grain certificates, providing meals against tickets, and allowing individuals to keep any surplus" for grain consumption before the summer harvest, and the welfare and health of the masses are generally good. Currently, over 130,000 people are engaged in fishery production across the province, and by mid-February, the export of aquatic products had increased by 60 percent compared to the first quarter of last year. Last winter and this spring, the province afforested a total of 25.49 million mu, and has currently completed timber production of 310,000 cubic meters, accounting for 7.5 percent of the annual plan.

On March 18, 1960, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China transmitted this report.