The problem with agriculture is not that it's not profitable - it is. The problem with it is that its profitability needs to grow, and in this sector in particular, you very quickly run into the impossibility of always increasing profits. We might be able to pull off this plan, perhaps even a focused target - though that would need special sustained measures - but it's not going to last.
Attempting to Fulfill the Plan MNKh Edition
- Thread starter Blackstar
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Red Rationalist
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Let's worry about the next plan goals when this plan ends. And to be fair here - The Soviet political system has adjusted their expectation downwards to be far more reasonable. Our growth targets for agriculture are a full 10% lower than the ranges of the 7th plan, which shows they are more in line with reality.
10ebbor10
DON'T PANIC
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- Present
We already have overproduction, as we are subsidizing and exporting at a loss.
Chemicalization can't really help us then, as it'll just worsen the oversupply. Diversification might help a bit. Maybe chemicalization + abandonning less suitable lands, but that will be politically unpopular.
So yeah, even the low targets will be hard.
While now that we choose to get involved I can vibe with going full throttle and trying to get everything out of our position that we can, there is an argument to be made that focusing so much of our investment on the area that is already running into diminishing returns is not a good idea when we can instead focus on other areas that still have room to grow. And we will need to really focus - with only six native dice, we'll probably need to park two of our free ones there permanently, and infrastructure, roads especially, will need even more attention so they can be completed faster and their effects actually propagate.
Honestly though, considering how popular fucking over managers is, picking an area to focus on where we can rapidly create their alternatives is a workable idea. And it has a higher Service valuation than Balanced, so it's not like we'll neglect that sector.
- Location
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I think it will be hard to reach the point of diminishing returns, we have never taken a plan to focus to deal with the systemic issues in agriculture unless you count the first one (and that was more trying to only shoot agriculture in the foot rather than taking it out in the barn and killing it as OTL). Investment has been consistently low or second lowest throught all plans by a good bit, and that is not even considering roads. There is a lot to unfuck in the sector, some of it reforms like the insurance we just did, but mostly a lot of roads which help in general, some LCI projects and strong consistent investment in agri actions in general.
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- Location
- [REDACTED]
I'd be curious to get people's read on how long Klimenko is likely to last. He was a compromise candidate and I'm not sure he was placed in this position by the higher ups as the person they want to stay as the head of the MNKh. I think his position is a lot more...tenuous then his predecessors. Which means we've got to ask if we want to commit to trying to keep him in this position for the long haul, or if we want to try and set-up favorable conditions for his successor (including the likelihood that we'll have a good group of successors to pick from). A lot of our actions wouldn't necessarily be affected by this, but I think it would be good to keep it in mind as we make these choices.
- Location
- UTC+0
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I think its impossible to tell this early, a lot depends on not just us succeeding, but Abramov not getting shanked too. But I do genuinely believe we can last this plan as long as we aren't seen as utterly incompetent or not doing enough against corruption.
Didn't this thread have a whole discussion once about how it's a dirty secret of macroeconomics going back to at least the Roman Empire that agriculture was not, is not, and will never ever be actually profitable on the large scale? It's just because humans have to eat that states incentivize agriculture, there is no (absolute) profit.
[]Plan Socialism with Boring Characteristics
-[]Implement New Policies: (Approximately 100 RpT of failures)
-[]Infrastructure: (+6 Infra Dice)
-[]20+15% GNP: (3500 All Cause RpT)
-[]Balanced Planning: (40% MFPG, 25% Capital Goods, 50% Consumer Goods, 20% Agricultural, and 50% Service Sector Valuation Increase)
-[] Housing Construction Efforts(Selection Required):
--[]5 Infrastructure Dice: (320 RpT)
-[]Hydroelectric Power:
--[]Krasnoyarsk-Irkutsk Hydroelectric Zone: (3 Infrastructure dice) (-180 RpT) (+200 Electricity +80 Non-Ferrous) (Three +150 Steel Steel mills available 9th 5yp) (Completion across 1969-1974)
--[]Amu Darya and Syr Danya Hydroelectric Cascades: (3 Infrastructure dice) (-180 RpT) (+350 Electricity +80 Non-Ferrous) (One +150 Steel Steel mill available 9th 5yp) (Automatically Completes Normal and Advanced Hydrological Stabilization Measures) (Completion across 1968-1974)
-[]Power Plant Construction(Nuclear VVER-500):
--[]1 Heavy Industry Die: (-150 RpT) (18 Electricity 3 Coal -1 Workforce per Turn) (Completion across 1970-1975)
-[]Power Plant Construction(CPSC):
--[]1 Heavy Industry Die: (-120 RpT) (25 Electricity -4 Coal)
-[]Power Plant Construction(CCGT):
--[]2 Light Industry Dice: (-280 RpT) (80 Electricity -1 Workforce per Turn) (3 More Gas development projects)
-[]Healthcare(Selection Required):
--[]3 Services Dice: (240 RpT)
-[]Education Expansions(Selection Required):
--[]4 Services Dice: (160 RpT)
Cost Per Turn: 1730
Average Resources Available Per Open Die: 48 (Does Not Include Rocketry)
Open Dice
Free: 4
Infra: 5
HI: 6
LCI: 6
Ag: 6
Services: 9
Here's my take. A diverse electrical mix, heavy service investments, and no frills. I just want to pour concrete.
[]Plan Socialism with Boring Characteristics
-[]Implement New Policies: (Approximately 100 RpT of failures)
-[]Infrastructure: (+6 Infra Dice)
-[]20+15% GNP: (3500 All Cause RpT)
-[]Balanced Planning: (40% MFPG, 25% Capital Goods, 50% Consumer Goods, 20% Agricultural, and 50% Service Sector Valuation Increase)
-[] Housing Construction Efforts(Selection Required):
--[]5 Infrastructure Dice: (320 RpT)
-[]Hydroelectric Power:
--[]Krasnoyarsk-Irkutsk Hydroelectric Zone: (3 Infrastructure dice) (-180 RpT) (+200 Electricity +80 Non-Ferrous) (Three +150 Steel Steel mills available 9th 5yp) (Completion across 1969-1974)
--[]Amu Darya and Syr Danya Hydroelectric Cascades: (3 Infrastructure dice) (-180 RpT) (+350 Electricity +80 Non-Ferrous) (One +150 Steel Steel mill available 9th 5yp) (Automatically Completes Normal and Advanced Hydrological Stabilization Measures) (Completion across 1968-1974)
-[]Power Plant Construction(Nuclear VVER-500):
--[]1 Heavy Industry Die: (-150 RpT) (18 Electricity 3 Coal -1 Workforce per Turn) (Completion across 1970-1975)
-[]Power Plant Construction(CPSC):
--[]1 Heavy Industry Die: (-120 RpT) (25 Electricity -4 Coal)
-[]Power Plant Construction(CCGT):
--[]2 Light Industry Dice: (-280 RpT) (80 Electricity -1 Workforce per Turn) (3 More Gas development projects)
-[]Healthcare(Selection Required):
--[]3 Services Dice: (240 RpT)
-[]Education Expansions(Selection Required):
--[]4 Services Dice: (160 RpT)
Cost Per Turn: 1730
Average Resources Available Per Open Die: 48 (Does Not Include Rocketry)
Open Dice
Free: 4
Infra: 5
HI: 6
LCI: 6
Ag: 6
Services: 9
Here's my take. A diverse electrical mix, heavy service investments, and no frills. I just want to pour concrete.
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Red Rationalist
Spinning in eternity
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- Andro-Orlando Hair Saloon
- Pronouns
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A lot of the issue in agriculture are caused by lacking transportation (infra roads + services project), which we want to tackle anyway using non-agri dice. I don't believe your speculation about needing two dices permanently to improve agriculture is grounded in any way. Trying to make agriculture profitable isn't some kind of grand investment project, it's a smaller sub-project under a broader project of trying to tie less urbanized areas more into the general economy. We can invest in multiple areas at the same time, and making any assumptions about agriculture being wasteful investment when the entire turn system is being reworked is dubious.
[] Continuing the Good Times
-[] Implement New Policies
-[] Infrastructure
-[] 20+15% GNP
-[] Balanced Planning
-[] Housing Construction Efforts
--[] 3 Infrastructure Dice
-[] Hydroelectric Power
--[] Amur Cascade (1 Infra Dice)
--[] Amu Darya and Syr Danya Hydroelectric Cascades (3 Infra Dice)
-[] Power Plant Construction(Nuclear VVER-500)
--[] 1 Heavy Industry Die
-[] Power Plant Construction(CPSC)
--[] 2 Heavy Industry Dice
-[] Power Plant Construction(CCGT)
--[] 2 Light Industry Dice
-[] Healthcare
--[] 2 Services Dice
-[] Education Expansions
--[] 4 Services Dice
3500 - 100 - 180 - 60 - 180 - 150 - 240 - 280 - 130 - 160 = 2020 leftover rpt (Theoritically another 33 Dice can per used with this leftover)
18 dice already used
Leftovers
9 Dice Infra
5 Dice HI
6 Dice LCI
6 Dice Angei
10 Dice Services
Not sure if someone already made this same plan
Not smacking the managers and instead slowly choking them with a normal implement policy option and 20+15% should shut them up from complaining.
As usual Infra Focus (what a surprise), the reason why I am doing 3 dice in housing is beacuase our infrastructure is worse than we think and we need to do more of it faster and its hurting our economy now while housing is fine and only affects the far future and thus can be done later.
I am honestly not sure about the dams, I simply followed with the flow (ha)
As for the rest power production, I chose not to do the gas expansion because our dice in LCI will be really limited and balancing gas and coal seems like a good play since both them will sooner or later have issues in digging/pumping them up despite our vast reserves. And nuclear since everyone wants it.
I am following with others in health and education so it is what it is.
-[] Implement New Policies
-[] Infrastructure
-[] 20+15% GNP
-[] Balanced Planning
-[] Housing Construction Efforts
--[] 3 Infrastructure Dice
-[] Hydroelectric Power
--[] Amur Cascade (1 Infra Dice)
--[] Amu Darya and Syr Danya Hydroelectric Cascades (3 Infra Dice)
-[] Power Plant Construction(Nuclear VVER-500)
--[] 1 Heavy Industry Die
-[] Power Plant Construction(CPSC)
--[] 2 Heavy Industry Dice
-[] Power Plant Construction(CCGT)
--[] 2 Light Industry Dice
-[] Healthcare
--[] 2 Services Dice
-[] Education Expansions
--[] 4 Services Dice
3500 - 100 - 180 - 60 - 180 - 150 - 240 - 280 - 130 - 160 = 2020 leftover rpt (Theoritically another 33 Dice can per used with this leftover)
18 dice already used
Leftovers
9 Dice Infra
5 Dice HI
6 Dice LCI
6 Dice Angei
10 Dice Services
Not sure if someone already made this same plan
Not smacking the managers and instead slowly choking them with a normal implement policy option and 20+15% should shut them up from complaining.
As usual Infra Focus (what a surprise), the reason why I am doing 3 dice in housing is beacuase our infrastructure is worse than we think and we need to do more of it faster and its hurting our economy now while housing is fine and only affects the far future and thus can be done later.
I am honestly not sure about the dams, I simply followed with the flow (ha)
As for the rest power production, I chose not to do the gas expansion because our dice in LCI will be really limited and balancing gas and coal seems like a good play since both them will sooner or later have issues in digging/pumping them up despite our vast reserves. And nuclear since everyone wants it.
I am following with others in health and education so it is what it is.
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No, just building infrastructure and increasing connectivity is not enough to get 20 and especially 30% increase in profitability. We'll need to implement a lot of projects like next generation pesticides, next generation herbicides, more fertilizers, meat farms, increased mechanization, crop diversification, the previously mentioned measures for small producers and we'll need to implement all that on a wide scale and fast enough for it to actually start contributing. Like, we're not just a few simple fixes away from resolving all the problems with agriculture - if we get into it, it will require a lot of effort. It is not obvious that said effort is best spent in this area, though I don't necessarily disagree.
Frankly I don't think the solution to the agriculture issue will be directly from anything we can do because that would require us to just throw our hands up and say that farms are bound by utility rather than profitability and that's not something we can do unilaterally, especially with the current political situation. Best we can do is what we currently do, which is try to make the farms profitable and fail until the sup sov is amiable to changing the standards.
I think it's important to emphasize the distinction between simply failing and pouring in a lot of effort, really improving the food situation for the workers and visibly enhancing the countryside and then failing/barely succeeding anyway. In the latter case, it would be much easier to argue that the problem is with the measurement instead of our actions.
Red Rationalist
Spinning in eternity
- Location
- Andro-Orlando Hair Saloon
- Pronouns
- They/Them
You are just baselessly speculating here. You are making the assumption "20% growth is difficult to reach", provide no argument for that, and build your expectation for all the projects that need to be done around that. There is no evidence to suggest we will need to spend free dice on moderate agriculture goals. I'm not going to further engage with vibes-based arguments about how 5% more agriculture growth is going to drain all of our resource income and doom the plan.
Well, no, I am actually speculating based on Discord.
- Location
- The United States
- Pronouns
- She/Her
More then anything else, agricultural policy is a question of policy rather then funding. Increasing yields massively is to an extent a different question then sector profitability or even how well policy there can be used for the elimination of poverty. 30% growth over five years is only approximately 5% and a bit per annum growth. The former will help the latter, but much of the new ground is a case of unfucking policies around the sector and re-aproaching it after mostly fucking around around it since 1930.Well, no, I am actually speculating based on Discord.
Even without that, though, while I am not saying it'll doom the plan, given the descriptions saying it's a mess that needs effort to be fixed and calling it a "salvaging", previous threadmark mentioning "Improving market access and financial tools for farmers can help, but is unlikely to fix any of the root issues", and just the general historical - both OTL and TTL - difficulties with agriculture and agricultural profitability specifically, it's not exactly a "vibes-based argument" that reaching the highest possible level will, in fact, require spending significant effort on agriculture. I can't say the exact numbers for sure, of course, but two free dice on average seems like reasonable conjecture.
Edit: The cost is significant, but its less economic and more political. On the other hand, actually fixing the situation will do more for the poverty rate then nearly anything else you can do.
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- Location
- [REDACTED]
It will be interesting to see what sort of options we have for addressing agriculture. The guy we have running agriculture in the MNKh seems pretty decent, so we shouldn't have any problems there at least. No mater what though, we're gonna have to hope the dice don't screw us over when we try to unfuck our agricultural policy.
The policy shifts would come more from Bureaucracy dice than from Agriculture dice, then? And the actual effort in the sector is more to carry them through than to solve the problem on its own?
Red Rationalist
Spinning in eternity
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You are misunderstanding the quote. It's a commentary on the service focussed plan, pointing out all the necessary measures to achieve simultaneous agricultural growth and mechanization required to free a sufficient amount of agricultural labour. Historical analogues to the IRL soviet union's agriculture are also erroneous, given the significant deviation in agricultural policy under the stalin era (mainly, not causing massive famine due to stalinist collectivization).
And since we are battling using quotes here:
Agriculture is primarily a policy question, not direct agricultural funding. The funds and technical capabilities aren't the problem, infra and small farmer access to modernization is.
A lot of the obstacles in agriculture were due to policy failure, in part caused by the lagging process in agricultural reassements. We have the information. We have the political will to restructure. I wouldn't make any assumption about agri forcing two dice from us, given just how much of the reforms (infra, services, LCI food industry, bureaucracy) are done via other sectors.
Staple agriculture can never really be profitable past a certain level of technical intensity, but turning your grain into cheeseburgers can be very profitable. Which would be our strategy for trying to push Ag values up in pretty much all cases, we'd be squeezing grain costs on the production side even more and then pouring all those nearly-free calories into livestock for the value-add. It's 1965, meat is synonymous with prosperity and luxury, both for our internal market and for exports to CMEA/the broader global market.
We haven't actually done any expansions to meat production in the better part of a decade IIRC, while wages and population and expectations have all skyrocketed compared to the last time we did. I think there's a lot of room in the "luxury" Ag market to be genuinely profitable (as long as you only look at the balance sheet of the cattle ranch, not the grain farm feeding it). It would require breaking the grain SOE stranglehold on land/infrastructure/policymaking, but we already took step 1 of that journey with backing the small farmers. Picking a course and sticking with it is going to be important if we want Klimenko to survive more than one term IMO, flip-flopping every other vote cycle will just get us torn apart by all our enemies.
Yeah, but dice are not just pouring money into the sector, it's also pouring personnel and attention and, to some degree, influence. Structural reform and getting small farmer access and making sure SOEs don't fuck things up there all sound like things that would require personnel and attention. I don't think just because it's mainly a policy question we're free to say it's not going to need more than default dice, even without considering the benefit of popular measure like getting meat at every table.
[]Plan Building Farmhouses
--[]Profitability: Implement New Policies Retroactively (-200 RpT)
--[]Focus: Infrastructure (+6 Infra dice)
--[]Spending: 20+10% GNP (3500 RpT allocation)
--[]Recovering Agriculture
--[]Autodice
---[]Housing: 5 Infra dice (-320 RpT)
---[]Hydro: 4 Infra dice - Amur + Amu Darya/Syr Darya Cascades (-240 RpT)
---[]Nuclear: 1 HI die (-150 RpT)
---[]Coal: 2 HI dice (-240 RpT)
---[]CCGT: 2 LCI dice (-280 RpT)
---[]Healthcare: 2 Services dice (-130 RpT)
---[]Education: 4 Services dice (-160 RpT)
Rebuilding Agriculture will be hard sure but it'll be fun and interesting
ultimately quests are games and we should do what we're most interested by playing with
And I'll defend klimnko on Housing
someone said that the 7 dice option would be like Voz just going fast and destroying neighborhoods
klimnko is very much different than voz
when klimnko says that 7 dice worth of resources are needed to remodeled houses and install the new electronic controlled central heating pumps and ac
you can believe that's exactly what he means
and that's what makes the option tempting to me after the nat 100 and technological leap we've been able to make
but it's true that would take away too much from the road efforts we need in general but also especially with an Agriculture & rural living focus
so I think 5 is a better compromise than just treading water with 3
--[]Profitability: Implement New Policies Retroactively (-200 RpT)
--[]Focus: Infrastructure (+6 Infra dice)
--[]Spending: 20+10% GNP (3500 RpT allocation)
--[]Recovering Agriculture
--[]Autodice
---[]Housing: 5 Infra dice (-320 RpT)
---[]Hydro: 4 Infra dice - Amur + Amu Darya/Syr Darya Cascades (-240 RpT)
---[]Nuclear: 1 HI die (-150 RpT)
---[]Coal: 2 HI dice (-240 RpT)
---[]CCGT: 2 LCI dice (-280 RpT)
---[]Healthcare: 2 Services dice (-130 RpT)
---[]Education: 4 Services dice (-160 RpT)
Rebuilding Agriculture will be hard sure but it'll be fun and interesting
ultimately quests are games and we should do what we're most interested by playing with
And I'll defend klimnko on Housing
someone said that the 7 dice option would be like Voz just going fast and destroying neighborhoods
klimnko is very much different than voz
when klimnko says that 7 dice worth of resources are needed to remodeled houses and install the new electronic controlled central heating pumps and ac
you can believe that's exactly what he means
and that's what makes the option tempting to me after the nat 100 and technological leap we've been able to make
but it's true that would take away too much from the road efforts we need in general but also especially with an Agriculture & rural living focus
so I think 5 is a better compromise than just treading water with 3
Anyway, taking the discussion above and some chatter on Discord in the account, here's my plan proposition - since getting agriculture target is more a matter of political capital and right actions than directly spending money in the sector, we can sacrifice money for political capital with a 15+15 option. We're in position to become the only reasonable option a lot of managers have, as long we don't outright burn those bridges, and their gratitude - or, well, cooperation at least - is something we can use to push for populist measures that will actually address the root problems. Having less money to spend does mean we'll have to leave a lot of dice fallow, especially in HI, but that can actually work out - due to (necessarily, as it turned out) being left alone for a year, Smelyakov will have the time to consolidate his support in HI, so we can't invest hard in it either before or after his removal, since either it will be misappropriated or the sector will be on fire and thus need careful management. Thankfully, the Agriculture plan actually addresses that by having a lower MFPG and Capital Goods targets without the need to free up labour by doing expensive modernizations.
[] Plan Worker-Peasant Alliance
-[] Implement New Policies
-[] Infrastructure
-[] 15+15% GNP
-[] Recovering Agriculture
-[] Housing Construction Efforts
--[] 3 Infrastructure Dice
-[] Hydroelectric Power
--[] Amu Darya and Syr Danya Hydroelectric Cascades (3 Infra Dice)
--[]Amur Cascade (1 Die)
-[] Power Plant Construction(Nuclear VVER-500)
--[] 1 Heavy Industry Die
-[] Power Plant Construction(CPSC)
--[] 2 Heavy Industry Dice
-[] Power Plant Construction(CCGT)
--[] 2 Light Industry Dice
-[] Healthcare
--[] 2 Services Dice
-[] Education Expansions
--[] 4 Services Dice
2900-100-60-180-180-150-240-280-130-160=1420 RpT
Free Dice: 4 Dice
Infrastructure: 9 Dice
Heavy Industry 5 Dice
Light and Chemical Industry 6 Dice
Agriculture 6 Dice
Services 10 Dice
40 Dice per turn, 35.5 RpT per dice.
[] Plan Worker-Peasant Alliance
-[] Implement New Policies
-[] Infrastructure
-[] 15+15% GNP
-[] Recovering Agriculture
-[] Housing Construction Efforts
--[] 3 Infrastructure Dice
-[] Hydroelectric Power
--[] Amu Darya and Syr Danya Hydroelectric Cascades (3 Infra Dice)
--[]Amur Cascade (1 Die)
-[] Power Plant Construction(Nuclear VVER-500)
--[] 1 Heavy Industry Die
-[] Power Plant Construction(CPSC)
--[] 2 Heavy Industry Dice
-[] Power Plant Construction(CCGT)
--[] 2 Light Industry Dice
-[] Healthcare
--[] 2 Services Dice
-[] Education Expansions
--[] 4 Services Dice
2900-100-60-180-180-150-240-280-130-160=1420 RpT
Free Dice: 4 Dice
Infrastructure: 9 Dice
Heavy Industry 5 Dice
Light and Chemical Industry 6 Dice
Agriculture 6 Dice
Services 10 Dice
40 Dice per turn, 35.5 RpT per dice.