e 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.

Government efforts to improve livestock breeds and yields through
selective breeding, artificial insemination, and better management
practices have also been impeded by peasant apathy. Although yields of
up to 5,500 pounds of milk per cow were obtained on some state farms in
1966 and yields of about 3,300 pounds to 3,950 pounds on the more
efficient lowland collective farms, the average yield of milk per cow
on all lowland collective farms in that year was only about 1,750 to
2,200 pounds, and a large number of upland farms obtained even less.

The latest available official Albanian livestock statistics are for the
year 1964. Data for 1965 and 1966 have been published by the Food and
Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations. The Fourth
Five-Year Plan indicates the numbers planned for some of the livestock
categories in 1970 through percentage increases expected to be attained
over the numbers in 1965. In the case of cattle, the largest increase by
far has been planned for draft oxen--60 percent as against only 12
percent for all cattl