Leaders competed with each other to see who could make the most things. This led the farms to be forgotten. Leaders would also lie about the amount of crops being grown. They would tell the government that they were making more than they actually were. In 1959, the country began running out of food. This is because they sold their grain to other countries. This problem was made worse because the output of farms was decreasing. People were also not allowed to leave the areas they were living in. That meant that they could not look for food in other places. Some villages had one-fourth or one-third of people dying in them. Girls and old people were underfed. Infants and the very old were the first to die.