Eagle, I don't want to form an alliance anymore.

"In the past, all our thoughts were focused on whether we could have enough to eat. A country that is still worried about its staple food and whether it can afford bread has no energy to think about anything else!"

All policy attention and resources have been drawn away by the word "food." How have we managed these past few years? A bumper harvest brings a sigh of relief, a poor harvest prompts a rush to import foreign exchange. Living hand to mouth, who has the time or inclination to care whether ordinary people have a single fresh vegetable on their table?

"Now that the staple food supply is stable, it means that the urgent need of the Soviet people for non-staple foods on their tables can now be put on the table."

Slava looked at her.

"Contradictions are constantly evolving and transforming. Now, the alliance faces the contradiction between the people's need for a better life and the unbalanced and inadequate development of our country," Director Nian said. "People are no longer satisfied with just having enough to eat; they want to eat well, they want fresh vegetables, they want a decent piece of meat, and they don't want their tables to be filled with canned food and potatoes forever..."

This need has always been there, but in the past, when we couldn't even guarantee our staple food supply, no one mentioned it. Now that we can, it's come to the fore.

Slava knew that what Director Nian said was true. Just last month, he had sent people to conduct undercover investigations at grocery stores in several major cities. The reports from those investigations were not good:

The supply of staple foods has indeed improved, and the long lines in front of grain and oil stores have shortened considerably. However, the lines in front of non-staple food stores, such as those selling meat, eggs, vegetables, and sausages, are actually longer!

When people no longer need to queue for bread, their desire to queue doesn't disappear; it simply shifts—towards the next thing they lack.

Once the shortage of staple food was filled, the shortage of non-staple food became apparent. Moreover, because purchasing power was freed up from the "grabbing of grain," the demand for non-staple food surged even more fiercely than before.

"It's time to enrich the dining tables of the Soviet people."

Slava nodded. He stood up and walked to the map of the entire Soviet Union hanging on the wall, looking at this vast and despairing country that spanned eleven time zones.

"Let's hold a meeting to discuss this. Let's bring up the next steps for agricultural production and research consortia at the central meeting and have all the ministries and commissions give their opinions."

Sigrún has taught at the Iceland University of the Arts as a part-time lecturer since and was Dean of the Department of Fine Art from -. In – she held a research position at Reykjavík Art Museum focusing on the role of women in Icelandic art. She studied fine art at the Icelandic College of Arts and Crafts and at Pratt Institute, New York, and holds BA and MA degrees in art history and philosophy from the University of Iceland. Sigrún lives and works in Iceland.

The meeting is scheduled for mid-January.

The delegation from the Academy of Sciences included an academician in charge of agriculture and biological sciences. Prime Minister Ryzhkov sat to Slava's right, and the leader to his left. Also present were representatives from the Ministry of Agriculture, the State Planning Committee's agricultural group, and several major grain-producing republics.

Slava first passed the conversation to the Academy of Sciences.

The elderly academician adjusted his glasses and took out a thick document from his briefcase. As he spoke, Slava noticed a detail: the old man's voice was somewhat soft when he read the words "breeding" and "genetic characteristics."

Slava knew where this hesitation came from.

This is Lysenko's legacy. For decades, from the 1930s to the 1960s, Lysenko used the label of "bourgeois pseudoscience" to bring down, exile, and imprison scientists engaged in genetic breeding one by one.

The renowned Soviet plant geneticist Vavilov died in prison under Lysenko's persecution. In those years, words like gene, heredity, and breeding were political labels that could lead to conviction. The academician before us is someone who survived that shadow. His generation of biologists spent their youth in a discipline that had been politically emasculated.

PS: Vavilov was the founder of the All-Union Institute for Plant Industry, which was responsible for collecting germplasm resources from around the world. By the 1930s, the seed bank had more than 1000 million varietal samples. He traveled to more than 50 countries on five continents to collect germplasm resources and built the world's largest seed bank. However, because of Lysenko, he was arrested in 1940 and died of hunger and disease in prison in 1943. Lysenko eventually took his place.

It wasn't until Khrushchev's downfall that the Soviet Academy of Sciences, while reviewing Lysenko's data, discovered numerous alterations and falsifications and began to rectify the situation. At this point, genetics in the Soviet Union, which had stagnated for nearly twenty years, began to recover.

"General Secretary, comrades, the Chinese Academy of Sciences has submitted a dual-use crop development plan."

The Academy of Sciences hopes to cultivate crop varieties that can be used for both food production and industrial or technical applications, and to develop and introduce new grain, vegetable and oilseed crops that are high-yielding, high in nutritional value and useful for industry.

These crops can be used as food—such as high-protein feed—and can also be used to extract industrial raw materials—biofuels, textile fibers, or pharmaceutical ingredients.

In this way, the same batch of agricultural resources can be utilized more fully, agriculture can be diversified, and the profitability of the production and research consortium can be improved. Developing these varieties not only strengthens food security and reduces dependence on imports, but also promotes the sustainable development of agriculture, industry, and research institutes within the consortium.

The plan sounded very ambitious, but as Slava listened, he silently tried to cool it down.

The plan itself was sound and very visionary. But Slava knew all too well what being overly ambitious meant in practice.

Extracting biofuels and pharmaceutical raw materials from crops is a decade in the future, a vision built on a mature agricultural industry and biotechnology foundation! To invest real money in this now is simply throwing limited funds into a pit with no short-term returns.

He already had a plan in mind for how to handle this plan—the grand framework could be kept as a slogan, or written into documents as a long-term goal, but what really needed to be invested in right now were the two most practical layers of the plan:

The two main crops are high-protein feed crops and oilseed and nitrogen-fixing rotation crops.

The former can immediately fill the meat supply gap, while the latter can improve soil and promote crop rotation. As for the prospects of biofuels and pharmaceuticals? Let's leave those on the wall for now.

Sure enough, Ryzhkov was the first to express his support: "I support dual-use crops, but I think priorities need to be clearly defined!"

Comrades, what's the most lacking thing on people's tables right now? It's meat. The longest lines outside grocery stores are for butcher shops; our meat supply gap remains unfilled year after year. And where does meat come from? It comes from what livestock eat. What do livestock eat? Feed. And what's the quality of our feed? Low in protein, coarse, and with low conversion rates—if we want to achieve large-scale meat production, we need to produce high-quality feed.”

He put his hands on the table.

"Therefore, in this dual-purpose crop program, what I value most is high-protein feed. If we can increase feed production, meat production will increase, which is the most direct and visible benefit to the people."

Solving the meat problem should be the top priority.

Slava nodded. What the Soviet Union needed right now was a good dish of beef stew with potatoes.

But then Director Nian spoke up.

"The Premier is right, we do need to control the meat supply, but I think we should add something else to the table besides animal feed—vegetables."

"We need to enrich the food baskets of the vast Soviet people, so I propose a food basket plan."

The meeting room fell silent for a moment.

"Dual-purpose crops and high-protein feeds are all good things, but they all have one thing in common—they are slow to take effect and the general public can't see the results."

Feed has been improved, livestock have grown bigger, the meat goes to the slaughterhouse, and then to the butcher shop. How long does this chain take to complete? A year? Two years? Ordinary people won't feel any change in the next year or two; they only know that there are still queues outside the butcher shop. As the staple food problem is solved, people's demands will only increase. This process might be too slow to show results.

"But vegetables are different. Fast-growing vegetables—cabbage, radishes, cucumbers, tomatoes, etc.—take anywhere from thirty days to two months from planting to being served on the table. If cucumbers are planted in the suburbs today, fresh cucumbers will be on the tables of Moscow residents in just over a month."

This speed of effectiveness is unmatched by animal feed, and it's also the first thing that can reassure the public.

Nian Dao looked at Slava and said, "What we lack most in all these reforms is tangible, visible results for the people!"

It's the kind of effect that can make an ordinary worker go home and tell their children, "The vegetable store has fresh tomatoes today." A single fresh vegetable leaf is more effective than a hundred slogans from our propaganda machine!

After eating canned food for so many years, when ordinary people suddenly experience something new, their perception of the Party and this reform changes immediately. The food basket can quickly improve the Party's image in the hearts of the people.

She paused for a moment, then added, "Moreover, its economic benefits are not low, and the capital turnover rate is faster than that of meat production. If the vegetables sell well, the production and research consortium will make money; if they make money, the consortium will be motivated to develop more diverse varieties and grow more vegetables. It's a positive cycle. Feed and dual-purpose crops are long-term goals, while the vegetable basket is a short-term goal—the long-term goal addresses the fundamentals, while the short-term goal addresses people's sentiments. I think we must focus on both."

Slava strongly agreed. The propaganda machine had been running for months, constantly talking about the Great Depression, which only let the Soviet people know that the United States had lost; it couldn't change their living conditions. But if this plan could succeed…

He desperately needs a victory that will immediately bring tangible benefits to the people.

But at this moment, representatives from the agricultural industry-research consortium raised a different opinion:

"The Foreign Minister's idea is good, but I think we need to consider the alliance's transportation situation. The 'vegetable basket' sounds nice, but it may be difficult to implement."

He explained to everyone, "The alliance's transportation system is very old, and the infrastructure is constantly deteriorating. Before the production and research consortium was established, much of the waste rotted in the ground and on the roads. Now, the damage in the ground is no longer a problem, since the consortium has solved the warehousing and processing issues, but the transportation problem still exists."

"The Chinese Academy of Sciences once calculated that if we could eliminate waste and spoilage in the production, storage, and transportation stages, the usable amount of grain could increase by a quarter, fruits and vegetables by 40%, and meat by 15%! 40%! What does that mean? It means that nearly half of the vegetables we grow rot on the way from the field to the table."

He shrugged.

“Fruits and vegetables are different from grains. Wheat can be stored in granaries for months after harvesting, but cucumbers and tomatoes will rot in a few days if they are not transported by cold chain after being picked and are jostled on the road. And what do we have? There is a serious shortage of refrigerated trucks, and the coverage of cold storage is pitifully low. The packaging is so primitive that people take the Pravda newspaper home with them when they go to the vegetable store! The roads are broken, and the vegetables spoil after a few bumps on the truck.”

No one screened for traits that allowed for good transportability. The Soviet breeding system had long focused on optimizing yield and disease resistance, not shelf life and transport tolerance. The reason was simple: under the planned economy, breeding goals were set by the State Planning Commission and the Ministry of Agriculture, and these agencies cared about how many tons were produced, not how many tons reached consumers.

Production targets are political tasks. The breeding station's task is to meet the production increase targets set by the State Planning Commission. No one sets a target of "reducing the transportation loss rate from 40% to 20%"—because the responsibility for calculating the loss rate is scattered among multiple departments, including production, transportation, storage, and retail, and no one admits that it is their own problem.

Moreover, breeding and distribution were isolated within the Soviet agricultural research system. Breeding scientists did not know (nor needed to know) what their varieties would undergo on their way to Moscow, and the transportation department did not know (nor cared) about the physical characteristics of the varieties.

No one is thinking about the problem from the perspective of the entire chain of "variety-planting-harvesting-transportation-storage-retail", which is irrelevant to planned targets.

For example, tomatoes. The Soviet Union cultivated a large number of tomato varieties, but the vast majority of them were soft-skinned, juicy, and easily cracked varieties. They were very delicious to eat right after picking them from your own plot, but they could not withstand any long-distance transportation!

In contrast, the United States and Israel have been developing hybrid varieties since the 80s, using genetic modification and hybridization to delay ripening, resulting in thicker, tougher skins that remain firm and rot-free even after more than two weeks at room temperature. These varieties sacrifice some flavor for transport tolerance, a direction the Soviet Union completely ignored in its breeding efforts.

So after the representatives working on the front lines told the central government about the difficulties, everyone began to consider whether to make new reforms in response to this issue.

Slava agreed: "Based on my understanding of the Union's bureaucratic system, the most critical point is not the losses themselves, but the impact of the losses on the indicators!"

Comrades, what would happen if objective conditions made it impossible to meet a target, and if the vegetable-growing cooperatives found that half of their produce would rot on the road and fail to meet the supply quotas set by higher authorities?

Everyone knows what happened in Uzbekistan.

"At times like these, don't expect the bureaucrats below to have any initiative to overcome difficulties or find ways to reduce losses. They won't. That's not how human nature works!"

When objective conditions are too difficult and targets cannot be met, most people's first reaction is not to rise to the challenge, but to rack their brains to find a way to get by.

Falsely reporting production output, falsifying accounts, counting rotten goods as qualified, or simply finding ways to push this daunting task onto others... If the central government sets an objectively unachievable target, then it's not about encouraging initiative to complete it under incentives; we're forcing them to falsify data!

After Slava finished speaking, the conference room was silent for a long while.

If the "vegetable basket plan" doesn't address cold chain logistics, transportation, and breeding issues, it's tantamount to issuing a license for forgery to local bureaucrats.

Director Nian thought for a moment and said, "Since we can't currently achieve cross-regional transportation under objective conditions, can we supply goods around cities?"

“Infrastructure construction takes time. In large cities such as Moscow, Leningrad, Kyiv, and Minsk, the consortium can build dedicated fruit and vegetable production areas within a radius of 50 to 100 kilometers, growing produce to supply the city directly.”

By focusing on short-distance delivery, crops can be planted, harvested, and marketed on the same day, minimizing spoilage rates.

The consortium representative pondered for a moment and nodded: "This plan is indeed more reliable than long-distance transportation, but the consortium is too large, and the geographical environments of different cities are all different—cold, arid, water-scarce... If we want our residents to have access to a wide variety of vegetables, we must build qualified modern greenhouses."

"We'll ask the Academy of Sciences about this technology later."

Ryzhkov added, "The targets can also be set separately. We won't touch the grain target—touching that would cause a political upheaval—but will add an additional target for fruit and vegetable supply. The surplus after fulfilling the staple food quota can be used for vegetable farming."

The assessment standards can be relaxed a bit, allowing for a higher loss rate than that for grain, to test the waters first.

Now it's Slava's turn to do the integration.

Sigrún has taught at the Iceland University of the Arts as a part-time lecturer since and was Dean of the Department of Fine Art from -. In – she held a research position at Reykjavík Art Museum focusing on the role of women in Icelandic art. She studied fine art at the Icelandic College of Arts and Crafts and at Pratt Institute, New York, and holds BA and MA degrees in art history and philosophy from the University of Iceland. Sigrún lives and works in Iceland.

After several hours of discussion, the final plan was finalized.

"We prioritize the cultivation of dual-purpose crops—high-protein feed crops. I completely agree with the Premier's assessment on this point. As feed production increases, meat production increases, and this is what the people can see most clearly."

Secondly, oilseed and nitrogen-fixing rotation crops—such as sunflowers, soybeans, peas, and broad beans—offer multiple benefits: sunflowers are our traditional crop, soybeans provide plant protein, edible oil, and animal feed, yet our soybean cultivation scale is far smaller than China's.

The Soviet Union is currently lagging behind in genetics, transgenics, and hybridization breeding technologies. The fastest solution is to import these technologies to address the immediate crisis.

"Being behind is not terrible; what is terrible is refusing to admit being behind and shutting yourself in," Slava said. "If we want to overtake others, we can only do so by learning from them, learning from their knowledge, learning from their experience, and bringing in their technology."

He turned to the map and pointed to Lao Zhong: "For the breeding of major crops such as soybeans and wheat, I advocate cooperation with China."

Ryzhkov raised his eyes.

"China is a traditional agricultural power. They have more experience and accumulated more knowledge about crop varieties than we have in recent years, especially soybeans—the origin of soybeans is China. Their germplasm resources and cultivation experience are stronger than ours. Moreover, the Sino-Soviet relationship has now been re-established, so this is also a way for us to strengthen cooperation."

After discussing dual-purpose crops and breeding, Slava returned to her shopping basket.

"The food basket plan cannot be abandoned. Our reforms desperately need a victory that the people can immediately taste the benefits of."

After discussion, it was initially decided to conduct pilot programs in the three cities of Leningrad, Moscow, and Kyiv.

As for transportation technology and greenhouses, bad news came from the Academy of Sciences: the Soviet Union's cold chain technology was far behind the world's. But it didn't matter—the cooperation between the Soviet Union and Europe was already much closer than in the past, and those small countries in the midst of currency turmoil certainly wouldn't mind holding more rubles in foreign exchange.

“I think Europe does a good job with cold chain greenhouses,” Slava said. “Take Denmark for example. Denmark is such a small country, at a higher latitude than Moscow and not far from the Arctic Circle, but its agricultural by-products are extremely abundant, its people have a high standard of living, and its greenhouse technology is the best in the world—one acre of greenhouse produce as much vegetables as ten acres of open field produce! If the Soviet Union could have learned this technology, it would have been a great relief.”

He looked around.

"We can introduce technologies that are lacking in areas such as cold chain and greenhouses through cooperation with Europe. However, we can't decide on specific partners or cooperation methods right now by sitting here."

Slava looked at the people from the Planning Commission and the Ministry of Agriculture: "How about this, you guys investigate carefully what technologies we lack, what our weaknesses are, and which country is the strongest and most suitable to cooperate with us?"

Sigrún has taught at the Iceland University of the Arts as a part-time lecturer since and was Dean of the Department of Fine Art from -. In – she held a research position at Reykjavík Art Museum focusing on the role of women in Icelandic art. She studied fine art at the Icelandic College of Arts and Crafts and at Pratt Institute, New York, and holds BA and MA degrees in art history and philosophy from the University of Iceland. Sigrún lives and works in Iceland.

The report was sent over quickly.

In the field of greenhouse technology, the Netherlands was the undisputed world leader in the 1980s. Eighty percent of the farmland in the Westland region was covered under greenhouse glass, and the output per unit area far exceeded that of open fields. Wageningen University is a world-class agricultural research institution!

The most ingenious thing is that the Netherlands itself is a high-latitude country, only a thousand miles from the Arctic Circle, and its climate is comparable to that of northern Soviet Union. Their entire greenhouse technology was developed to solve the problem of "growing vegetables efficiently in harsh climates", which is naturally in line with the Soviet approach.

Politically, it's not difficult either: Although the Netherlands is a NATO member, greenhouse technology, seeds, and agricultural equipment are not on the sensitive list of exports to the Soviet Union. Moreover, the Dutch are pragmatic; as long as there is money to be made, political stance is never an obstacle!

Scroll down to France.

France's strengths lie in seed breeding, agricultural research, and food processing. The French National Institute for Agricultural Research (INRA) is the largest agricultural research institution in Europe, with strong capabilities in crop breeding, disease-resistant varieties, and soil science. France is also one of the standard setters for its seed testing and variety registration system.

The Soviet Union needed to develop varieties that were adapted to its own climate and resistant to transportation, and France's breeding technology and germplasm resources were one of the most valuable partners.

Besides breeding, France also boasts world-class food processing and preservation technologies—dairy processing, fruit and vegetable preservation, cold chain transportation, and more.

For the Soviet Union, it was better to learn how to process vegetables into semi-finished products—frozen vegetables, refined canned goods, juice, dehydrated vegetable powder—than just how to grow them. They could even try industrial pre-made vegetables, which do not require a perfect cold chain for long-distance transportation and storage.

Another advantage of cooperating with France is that it can undermine American influence in Europe.

France is the most independent NATO member state in Europe. De Gaulle removed France from NATO's integrated military command structure in 1966, and throughout the Cold War, France consistently maintained dialogue and trade with the Soviet Union.

The channels of cultural and economic exchange between France and the Soviet Union have never been interrupted over the years. At present, Franco-Soviet relations are in a relatively positive phase. French companies have a genuine business interest in the Soviet market, and the French government is also happy to find room for cooperation with the Soviet Union outside the framework of US-led technology control.

The report also listed other candidate countries. Denmark—a leader in cold chain logistics, with Maersk being one of the world's largest refrigerated container shipping companies—is a compact and efficient example of a complete cold chain system from farm to table.

Finland, a neighboring country of the Soviet Union, has a climate closer to that of the Soviet Union than that of the Netherlands and France. The greenhouse insulation technology and northern berry cultivation that the Finns have accumulated under the conditions of long winters, short days, and extreme temperature differences are directly applicable to the northern Soviet Union, and there are few political obstacles.

Hungary is the most successful agricultural partner within the COMECON, with strong fruit and vegetable processing capabilities and no involvement in hard currency payments.

There is also the solar greenhouse in northern China, a passive solar greenhouse that does not rely on heating. It is low-cost and particularly suitable for the Central Asian and southern Siberian regions of the former Soviet Union, which lacked fuel but had abundant sunshine.

After further discussion within the Politburo, Slava decided to learn from the Netherlands in greenhouses, Denmark in cold chain logistics, Finland in northern crops, cooperate with China in solar greenhouses and major crop breeding, and learn from France in food processing and vegetable breeding.

Then this is a good time to go abroad to do business.

Slava chose France as the first stop on his overseas visit.

Slava knew all too well that when it came to technological cooperation with the West, technology was never the biggest obstacle; politics was!