SciTronics had net fixed assets of $ 18,000 and sales of $ 244,000 in 2008. Its fixed asset turnover ratio in 2008 was 13.6 times, a deterioration from 16.3 times in 2005. Leverage Ratios: How soundly is the company financed? 1. SciTronics’
In Poltava and Kharkov provinces, mass impoverishment of the peasants, which was exacerbated by the poor harvests of 1901 led to 40,000 peasants took part in an uprising where they also ransacked 150 landlord properties. The barricade between the peasants and landlords strengthened in the years of the Red cockerel 1903-4 where peasants set fire to landlord barns. This peasant unrest was supplemented by the fact that the price of grain increased due to hyper during the Russo-Japanese war in 1904 due and the wages of peasants failed to increase with it therefore many peasants were left to starve and were angered hence more likely to revolt. It was evident that introducing new policies which would avoid bad harvests thus preventing mass starvation would oppress opposition. Also, there was a need to lower the price of grain to make it affordable to impoverished peasants as they were most likely to revolt.
Wheat production yo-yoed from 25 to 18 million between the years 1928-1937. Throughout the Second Five-Year Plan, wheat production did increase to about 50 million tons, which shows a large increase. The Second Five-Year Plan seemed more successful for farming than livestock. With the changes of collectivizing, he used methods that some might say seemed unfair. The results of farm collectivization were debatable.
Industrialization was creating even more towns, increasing this problem. So in order to feed his industrial workforce Stalin needed to revolutionize agriculture. He achieved this through forced grain seizure and the prosecution of kulaks and forcing peasants to work together in ‘collectives’. By doing so he was able to secure extra grain to feed the growing urban population of workers and sell the surplus to gain foreign currencies for purchasing foreign machineries. Though collectivisation may have had short term boosts to the economy but the effects of collectivisation were disastrous.
By 1933 the value had dropped to three billion. Also, American industrial output as decreased by half. In 1933 the world acreage that covered wheat, rice, rye, maize, barley, and oats had been larger than in 1929. All the other crops, such as potatoes and sugar, that furnish calories for human consumption, had actually risen. As six sevenths of the American race depend on cereals for most of their nourishment, this gain in agricultural production was extremely important at the time.
Stalin was aware of the fact that by 1928, Russia was already two million tonnes short of the grain it needed to feed its workers. In the long run, collectivisation was a success. For example, the collective farms grew more food than the small, privately owned ones had done. 30-40 million tonnes
His army also consisted of millions of poor, starving peasants with bad equipment, poor supplies of rifles and ammunition. In 1916, two million soldiers were killed or seriously wounded, and one third of a million taken prisoners. The Russian population was horrified. They considered the Tsar irresponsible for taking over the army and held him responsible for everything; as a result instability was growing at an alarming rate for the Tsar who had once held himself so assuredly in power. Nicholas II took this course of action to assure himself he still had complete control of Russia.
Despite their inaccurate names (none of them actually lasted 5 years), these economic experiments laid the foundation for the emergence of the USSR as a world superpower. The first five year plan (1928-33) was primarily focused on heavy industry growth. Created by Gosplan, the targets were increased twice by Stalin. Each of these increases made the targets even more unrealistic. For example, of the four main parts of heavy industry; Coal, Iron, Steel and Oil, only the targets for oil production were met and exceeded by 1932.
To what extent did the policy of collectivisation achieve its objectives? Collectivisation was the process by which Russian agriculture was reformed. Traditionally, peasants had worked on small farms with very limited technology. Stalin planned to merge all the small farms into larger ‘collective’ farms. These new, larger farms would pool the labour and resources and therefore operate more efficiently.
He intended to provide an industrial basis for China by ordering 25,000 strictly regimented communes, thus making agriculture more efficient which would enable more farmers to labour in industry. He also believed that the abolition of private ownership would stop peasants indulging themselves by overeating so more mouths could be fed. However these ideas of Mao backfired and the disruption caused by ending private farming was a major cause to the famine because it discouraged peasants from producing food beyond their own immediate needs. The results of collectivisation were disastrous because the production simply didn’t compare with the population, in 1958 China produced 200 million tonnes of wheat and by 1960 it had fell 143.5 million. The falls in production led to 300,000,000 Chinese deaths so Mao’s agricultural policy was extremely responsible for the scale of the great famine in China.