Great Grain Robbery (1972)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_grain_robbery

by zeristor • 6 years ago

47 25 6 years ago

en.wikipedia.org

zeristor• 6 years ago

As mentioned in this NASA training video on Remote Sensing for agriculture:

https://youtu.be/pdR4GbMcRiM

dmos623• 6 years ago

Anyone aware of European datasets coming from agricultural remote sensing? I'd also be interested in forest land datasets.

londons_explore• 6 years ago

While in this case, the soviets came out ahead, the deal was not inherently unfair.

It appears the price was set based on market rates on the day the deal was done. In effect, the USA just sold all the grain on that day, more than they actually had, not on the actual day of delivery. They just issued a futures contract.

Had the price of grain fallen on world markets, the soviets would have lost out.

ggreer• 6 years ago

If the price of grain had fallen, the Soviet Union would have purchased it from other countries at market rates. Only after they had exhausted other countries' grain surpluses would they have bought from the US.

einpoklum2• 6 years ago

The GP is talking about prices falling after, not before, the purchase.

folli• 6 years ago

I think the point is that the market rate was "unfair" (depending on your definition of fairness), as it was based on massively assymetric information.

alskdjfsdfj• 6 years ago

why the term robbery?

just because the seller couldn't detect a weakness on the buyer and artificially inflate the prices it is considered a robbery? Does someone who will need a car for a job or lose the house for non-payment "rob" the car dealership for not disclosing they really need that car they are purchasing at market price?

IMO, the robbery is that the business people consulted for the deal saw only the big sale and the possibility to get their costs subsidized (for what reason that was even offered by the govt?!) and they indeed made a nice profit and were not affected by the internal price hike as they were sellers, not buyers, while the US public lost 300mi subsidizing this mess and paying the higher prices. Indeed a robbery.

code_duck• 6 years ago

“Author Martha Hamilton introduced the term as the title of Chapter VII of her book The Great American Grain Robbery & Other Stories, as part of an allegation that the U.S. government was robbing American taxpayers in order to support grain trading companies.”

myself248• 6 years ago

Which in itself is a reference to a 1903 silent film The Great Train Robbery, widely considered to be the first of what we'd now recognize as an action film, and the first western.

tyho• 6 years ago

It was alleged the U.S. government was robbing American taxpayers in order to support grain trading companies by subsidising trading with the Russians.

rmason• 6 years ago

Earl Butz is a hero to most farmers because when prices shot up they made more money than they ever had in a lifetime. In Michigan navy beans shot up 700%.

I had a farmer recount to me once that he went out with a broom and got enough beans from the bottom of a grain bin to fill the trunk of his car. He told me that trunk full brought him more cash than an entire gravity box wagon the year before!

pastablister• 6 years ago

Regional food shortages can have a global ripple effect. Sound familiar?

valuearb3• 6 years ago

Why would we subsidize the USSR during the Cold War? Why not require some political concessions first?

magicsmoke3• 6 years ago

In the context of the times, the late 60s-early 70s were a time of political concession from both the USSR and the US. This was the Detente period of the Cold War, when the two sides were trying to sign nuclear arms treaties to avoid mutual annihilation like they faced during the Cuban missile crisis as well as the expense involved with making tens of thousands of nukes, and the US was trying to pull itself out of Vietnam and needed good relations with the USSR to make sure they wouldn't have to fight a 2nd Vietnam war if the USSR decided to push the spread of global communism. The grain export deal was just one piece in the puzzle.

valuearb3• 6 years ago

Each piece should have had its own concession.

sdwr• 6 years ago

Would you steal a loaf of bread to feed your family? Would anyone try to stop you? What about a billion loaves?

dmos623• 6 years ago

The robbery is in reference to giving away US money to US grain companies.

einpoklum2• 6 years ago

Wikipedia says that "The problem was heightened by the fact that only a small fraction of the Soviet Union was able to be farmed"

Really? I though that, until the mid-century at least, the vast majority of the population of the USSR were farmers.

I mean, ok, of course they grey other things as well, but still - that sounds strange.

dmos623• 6 years ago

Yeah, not sure what to make of that. Apparently this is a reference to the black earth belt (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernozem). The article isn't particularly well written. Why only the Chernozem belt can be farmed (short term climate conditions maybe?)? What kind of mismanagement USSR exhibited that led to massive grain shortage on their end?

Great Grain Robbery (1972)

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