The regime proved less successful in its efforts to address chronic problems in agriculture, the stepchild of planners since collectivization. Khrushchev launched the Virgin Lands campaign, an attempt to put under cultivation vast stretches of the Kazakh steppe and western Siberia, but also to reanimate revolutionary enthusiasm by relying on young volunteers. After impressive initial results, how-ever, the land became exhausted, with millions of tons of topsoil lost to erosion. An initiative to compensate collective farmers for the actual cost of their products led, in 1962, to a rise in meat and dairy prices.. Accustomed to food prices kept artificially low by government subsidies, the public reacted with outrage, and riots broke out. The worst occurred in Novocherkassk in the north Caucasus, where factory pay had just fallen by about 30 percent. Several thou-sand workers and their supporters marched peacefully in protest, only to be fired on by government troops when they refused to disperse. Dozens were wounded and more than twenty people killed. Not a word appeared in the press. Thereafter, the price of bread and other products remained unchanged for decades, even though agricultural productivity remained low, so low that in 1963, the authorities imported grain from abroad.