tractor repair were also in short supply, resulting in machinery going unused even when all that was needed was a simple, cheap repair. Climate The dryland conditions in the Virgin Land areas, especially Kazakhstan, were not conducive to monoculture farming. The area got only 200 to 350 mm of rain yearly and the majority tended to fall in July and August, when the grain was ripening and at harvest time, whereas drought usually occurred in spring when the immature shoots needed the most water. Furthermore, the vegetation period was short and the area was prone to cold spells and frosts as late as early fall. Strong winds blew snow from the fields in winter and caused soil erosion in the spring. The soil was also characterized by high salt content. The intensive monoculture farming of the Virgin Lands campaign, with 83% of the total cropland in 1958-1959 being covered by grain, depleted the soil of necessary nutrients. This is likely one of the major causes for the gradual decrease in Virgin Land productivity after 1959. Inadequate grain storage facilities Very little infrastructure existed in the Virgin Land provinces prior to Khrushchev's announcement of the campaign. Consequently, when harvesting began there were minimal storage facilities for the crops. This caused substantial amounts of the crop yield to be left in the fields to rot. Furthermore, lack of storage facilities caused farmers to hastily harvest the entire crop during suitable weather, leading to ripe and unripe grain often being mixed together. This raised the moisture content and caused the grain to spoil. The loss of spoiled grain in this manner (referred to as dockage) often accounted for the loss of 10-15% of crop output. Harvests in Kazakhstan in 1956, 1958, and 1959 respectively were 23.8, 21.9, and 19.9 million tons of grain, whereas the storage capacity of Kazakhstan in 1960 was only 10 million tons of grain. Commemoration A minor planet, 2111 Tselina, discovered on 13 June 1969 by Soviet astronomer Tamara Smirnova is named to commemorate the 25th anniversary of virgin soil development in the USSR. In movies: The First Echelon (1955), Ivan Brovkin on the State Farm (1959) Virgin Lands was the third part of Brezhnev's trilogy, a series of memoirs of soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev (although most likely written by government-attached journalists). See also Agriculture in the Soviet Union Great Leap Forward, contemporary program in the People's Republic of