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Prodded by drought that has dashed hopes for a bumper Soviet wheat crop, Russian buyers last week returned, as expected, to the U.S. market. They signed contracts to buy 117 million bu., or 3.2 million metric tons, of winter wheat from Cook Industries of Memphis and Cargill Inc. of Minneapolis; at present prices, the deal amounts to about $470 million. That is hardly enough to push American prices up very much, but a big question remains: How much more does the U.S.S.R. plan...
...wheat crop this year is forecast at a record 2.2 billion bu., leaving ample supplies for export sales without serious impact on home prices. Agriculture Secretary Earl Butz predicts that sales of grain to the Soviet Union will have only a minimum effect on American prices even if they reach 10 million tons, which he believes they will. One possible effect: meat prices will be kept from falling, because a general tightening of grain markets will hold feed costs high...
...commodities markets traders were disappointed by the size of the Cook and Cargill deals. Wheat, corn, soybean and oat futures fell. The question mark, says Crop Analyst Conrad Leslie, "is at what price level the Russians will make further commitments." Meaning: the shrewd Soviet buyers may be waiting for prices to come down a bit further before placing further orders...
...only cactus and mesquite seem to flourish. There were heavy rains in November when, as Baptist Missionary Vance Brown puts it, "the people went crazy planting like they've never planted before. And then we didn't get another sniff of rain for seven months." The winter crop was lost and the spring crop, which normally would be planted in April, was never put in at all. To make matters still worse, a mysterious disease called "yellowing" has killed coconut palms that were a source of nourishment during previous droughts...
...relief effort has been fairly well coordinated, in part because various U.S. agencies were already at work in Haiti when the food emergency was declared. The distribution program, which is being administered by CARE, is intended to feed 120,000 people until the end of the summer, when a crop, planted in early June when spotty rains began to fall, can be harvested. Several dozen people have already died of starvation and the total may well grow...