The Ministry of Plenty is one of the ministries

Ministry (government department)

A ministry is a specialised organisation responsible for a sector of government public administration, sometimes led by a minister or a senior public servant, that can have responsibility for one or more departments, agencies, bureaus, commissions or other smaller executive, advisory, managerial or...

 from George Orwell

George Orwell

Eric Arthur Blair , better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English author and journalist...

's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four

Nineteen Eighty-Four

Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell is a dystopian novel about Oceania, a society ruled by the oligarchical dictatorship of the Party...

that governs Oceania. The other ministries are the Ministry of Truth

Ministry of Truth

The Ministry of Truth is one of the four ministries that govern Oceania in George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four...

, the Ministry of Peace

Ministry of Peace

The Ministry of Peace is one of four ministries in George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. Along with the Ministry of Truth, the Ministry of Love and the Ministry of Plenty, the Ministry of Peace governs in the Oceanic province of Airstrip One...

 and the Ministry of Love

Ministry of Love

The Ministry of Love is one of the four ministries that govern Oceania in George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four....

.

The Ministry of Plenty is in control of Oceania's planned economy

Planned economy

A planned economy is an economic system in which decisions regarding production and investment are embodied in a plan formulated by a central authority, usually by a government agency...

. It oversees public access to food

Food

Food is any substance consumed to provide nutritional support for the body. It is usually of plant or animal origin, and contains essential nutrients, such as carbohydrates, fats, proteins, vitamins, or minerals...

, supplies

Supply and demand

Supply and demand is an economic model of price determination in a market. It concludes that in a competitive market, the unit price for a particular good will vary until it settles at a point where the quantity demanded by consumers will equal the quantity supplied by producers , resulting in an...

, and good

Product (business)

In general, the product is defined as a "thing produced by labor or effort" or the "result of an act or a process", and stems from the verb produce, from the Latin prōdūce ' lead or bring forth'. Since 1575, the word "product" has referred to anything produced...

s. It is also in charge of rationing

Rationing

Rationing is the controlled distribution of scarce resources, goods, or services. Rationing controls the size of the ration, one's allotted portion of the resources being distributed on a particular day or at a particular time.- In economics :...

 these goods. As told in Goldstein's book

Goldstein's book

The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism, by Emmanuel Goldstein, is the fictional book that is a thematic and plot element integral to the dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four , by George Orwell...

, the economy of Oceania is very important, and it's necessary to have the public continually create useless and synthetic supplies or weapons for use in the war, while they have no access to the means of production

Means of production

Means of production refers to physical, non-human inputs used in production—the factories, machines, and tools used to produce wealth — along with both infrastructural capital and natural capital. This includes the classical factors of production minus financial capital and minus human capital...

. This is the central theme of Oceania's idea that a poor, weak populace is easier to rule over than a wealthy, powerful populace. Telescreen

Telescreen

Telescreens are most prominently featured in George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, although notably they have an earlier appearance in the 1936 Charlie Chaplin film Modern Times...

s often make reports on how Big Brother

Big Brother (1984)

Big Brother is a fictional character in George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. He is the enigmatic dictator of Oceania, a totalitarian state taken to its utmost logical consequence – where the ruling Party wields total power for its own sake over the inhabitants.In the society that Orwell...

 has been able to increase economic production, even when production has actually gone down (see Ministry of Truth

Ministry of Truth

The Ministry of Truth is one of the four ministries that govern Oceania in George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four...

).

The Ministry hands out statistics which are "nonsense". When Winston is adjusting some Ministry of Plenty's figures, he explains this:
Like the other ministries, the Ministry of Plenty does the opposite of its name, since it is in charge of maintaining poverty

Poverty

Poverty is the lack of a certain amount of material possessions or money. Absolute poverty or destitution is inability to afford basic human needs, which commonly includes clean and fresh water, nutrition, health care, education, clothing and shelter. About 1.7 billion people are estimated to live...

, scarcity, and financial shortages. Orwell made a similar reference to the Ministry of Plenty in his allegorical work Animal Farm

Animal Farm

Animal Farm is an allegorical novella by George Orwell published in England on 17 August 1945. According to Orwell, the book reflects events leading up to and during the Stalin era before World War II...

 when in the midst of a blight upon the farm, Napoleon the pig

Napoleon (Animal Farm)

Napoleon is a fictional character and the main antagonist in George Orwell's Animal Farm. While he is at first a common farm pig, he gets rid of Snowball, another pig which shares the power...

 orders the silo to be filled with sand, then to place a thin sprinkling of grain on top, which fools human visitors into being dazzled about Napoleon's boasting of the farm's superior economy.

In the Michael Radford film adaptation

Nineteen Eighty-Four (film)

Nineteen Eighty-Four is a 1984 British science fiction film, based upon George Orwell's novel of the same name, following the life of Winston Smith in Oceania, a country run by a totalitarian government...

, the ministry is renamed the Ministry of Production, or MiniProd.