areas were mostly rural settlements with small populations. The incredible speed with which Virgin Land workers were recruited and transported to the Virgin Lands created major housing and food shortages. The poor living conditions caused many workers to quickly pack up and leave within the first months to years of arriving in the Virgin Lands. The number of workers on the state farms in Kazakhstan increased by 322,000 from 1954–1957, but in this time only 1,800,000 m2 of housing was built. The people who were attracted to the Virgin Land settlements were young men from poor villages, orphans, and released prisoners because even though the living conditions were poor, it was still an improvement in their lifestyles. While the food shortages in Virgin Land settlements were solved by 1956, the housing problem remained an issue past the end of the 1950s. As a consequence of the poor living conditions and constant out-migration, there were shortages of workers on the new Virgin Land state farms. Between 1957–1960, 24,000 specialists of all disciplines were sent to work in the Virgin Land districts of Kazakhstan, and during the same time period 14,000 specialists left due to poor living conditions. Additionally, the workers who did stay were mostly young and inexperienced, lacking the skills to work the machinery and farm efficiently. To deal with the issue, a decree was issued in Kazakhstan at the end of 1959 that ordered the full-time training of 65,000 new tractorists and an additional 50,000 in off-duty time. However, due to resource restraints, less than half that number received training. As a short-term solution, the government began paying about 250,000 experienced farmers per year from southern regions of Kazakhstan to come to work in the Virgin Lands after they completed their own harvests. Machinery and repair shop shortages Despite Khrushchev's efforts to adequately supply the Virgin Land provinces with farm machinery by sending nearly all newly manufactured equipment and commandeering machinery from other areas of the Soviet Union for Virgin Land areas, there were still major shortages of farming machinery. For example, in Kazakhstan in 1959, there was only 1 tractor for every 218 (2.18 km) hectares of land. The problem was simply that the agricultural machinery industry in the Soviet Union was not capable of producing the amount of machinery demanded by sudden expansion of land under cultivation. Furthermore, machinery parts and the facilities and professionals needed for