The large size and diversified operations of the agroindustrial complexes place a heavy demand upon the expertise of management. Most of the available specialists do not have the requisite training to solve the numerous problems posed by planning and operational direction under the new conditions. Adaptation of agricultural school curricula to the new requirements and speedy retraining of specialists are therefore considered to be most urgent.

Some optimistic agricultural officials place high hopes in the introduction of computer-based automatic control systems. An electronic computer center was established at the Ministry of Agriculture in 1969, staffed by a group of 104 enthusiastic young specialists. They undertook the task of developing a single automated control system for agriculture and food production in the entire country by 1975, to be based on a number of integrated local and regional computer centers. By the end of 1970 the computer center had worked out annual plans for several farms and a plan for hothouse production in the country. It was in the process of finding a solution to a basic problem of the feed industry—a solution that would also drastically reduce the industry's transportation costs.

Considerable attention has also been given to the problem of communication in connection with the internal direction of the agroindustrial complexes' varied activities. Here, too, the idea has been advanced for automated control centers from which instructions would be issued to all operating divisions and workers in the field through radiotelephones or similar equipment. In this context a university instructor analyzing the management problems of agroindustrial complexes remarked that it was premature to speak of modern administrative and management methods as long as it was easier and faster to go by car from the farm center to any of the neighboring villages than to reach them by telephone.

LABOR AND WAGES

Official data on manpower and employment in agriculture are incomplete and incommensurate. The number of people gainfully employed in agriculture in 1970 was reported to have been 35.2 percent of the total in the economy, compared to 54.7 percent in 1960 and 44.9 percent in 1965. Full-time employment on farms of the agroindustrial complexes in 1970 was reported as 1,117,000 people—a reduction of 278,000 from the 1,395,000 employed in 1965. Yet the number of female collective farmworkers alone in 1969 was reported to have been 1,682,000, more than 1 million of whom participated full or part time in the collective work of the farms. No explanation concerning the discrepancies in these reported figures was available. The Sixth Five-Year Plan is variously reported to call for the transfer of an additional 220,000 or 350,000 people from the farms to nonagricultural employment.

The out-migration, mostly of young people, from agriculture brought about a deterioration in the age structure of the remaining farm population. The proportion of the sixteen- to twenty-five-year-old age group on farms was only 9.2 percent in 1969, compared to 22.3 percent in industry. Conversely, the proportion of persons fifty-five years and older was 29.1 percent in agriculture, compared to 8.6 percent in industry. The program for the modernization and intensification of agricultural production and, more particularly, the planned high level of mechanization demand the employment of large numbers of highly skilled young people. A series of economic, social, and cultural measures is therefore urgently needed to halt the drain of young manpower from the farms.

By 1971 the agricultural school system had not adapted its training programs to the actual needs of the emerging agroindustrial complexes. At the same time a serious problem in the employment of available technicians was presented by the scornful attitude of many farm managers toward specialists with secondary education. In 1971 farms employed more than 4,000 people without the requisite training in various professional positions. Although some of them may have compensated by experience for the lack of training, the situation was considered deplorable by a number of agricultural economists.

Under previously prevailing conditions, payments to farmworkers differed widely, depending upon the income levels of the individual farms. Under the new law wages for all farmworkers are to be gradually standardized on the principle of equal wages for equal work. Work input is to be measured on the basis of uniform labor norms differentiated according to natural conditions. In determining the wage level, consideration will also be given to increases in productivity, cost reduction, and the accumulation of investment funds by the farms. Distribution of the farm's income is to be carried out on the basis of a resolution by the Council of Ministers, details of which were not available in early 1973. Its main import is that the total remuneration of farmworkers, over and above their wages, will remain dependent upon the overall results of the individual farms. All farmworkers are entitled to a minimum wage of 80 leva per month, and members of previously independent collective farms retain their right to advance payments against their estimated final income shares.

Little substantive information is available on the current practice of remunerating people working on farms. The decree that went into effect on January 1, 1973, directed that the formation and distribution of incomes of all agroindustrial complexes and their constituent farms be based on a uniform system and on the principle that each farm must be fully self-supporting. Each farm must establish a wage fund calculated as a percentage of its total income. In the event that this fund is inadequate to cover legitimate wage requirements, the farms may draw upon two other obligatory funds or resort to bank credits.

INVESTMENT AND MECHANIZATION