Under communist rule, agriculture received much less attention and investment funding than industry. Partly because of this fact, agricultural output grew slowly, not regaining prewar levels of production until the 1960s. Falling productivity and the need to increase farm output to reduce agricultural imports eventually drew official attention to agriculture. A principal government goal was to encourage large-scale farming that could benefit from modern technologies and powerful farm equipment. Proceeding slowly during the 1980s, consolidation of farms accelerated in the 1970s. Most of the larger cooperatives encompassed several villages and raised a variety of crops and livestock. In the 1960s, in an effort to increase farm incomes, the government raised the prices of farm products; during the previous decade, by contrast, prices for farm produce had been kept low, partly to extract workers and investment funds for the expansion of industry. By the early 1970s, the average farm income reportedly had reached parity with that of urban white- collar workers. The farm labor force of the 1980s was relatively young (45% was under 40 years of age in 1980) and well educated. The performance of the agricultural sector improved markedly during the 1970s and the first half of the 1980s. In 1960 the official index of gross agricultural output (in constant 1980 prices) had stood at 96, compared with 100 in 1936. In 1970 the index reached 116.8, and by 1980 it had increased to 143. Between 1981 and 1985, according to official sources, total agricultural production increased by 9.8% over the 1980 level.