Word: grained
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...over the Europeans' unwillingness to take tough steps against the Soviets, and it came from Canada's Prime Minister Trudeau rather than from Carter. During a discussion about putting economic pressure on Moscow, Trudeau angrily declared: "Canada and the U.S. are taking action that hurts [by restricting grain sales to the Soviet Union]. What are you doing that hurts?" His outburst, said a participant, was greeted with "deafening silence...
...summit, Carter was to urge the allies to give more support to the U.S. ban on sales of grain and high technology to the Soviet Union until Moscow withdraws its troops from Afghanistan. The European allies, which only a week earlier renewed their appeal for a "neutral and nonaligned" Afghanistan, have been unwilling to do much that might jeopardize their trade with the Soviets...
...failings have been even more detrimental. In Kenya, says a U.N. expert, "90% of the trouble comes from bad marketing policies." Following a bumper crop of corn in 1978, the Kenya government overconfidently slashed prices paid to farmers by nearly 30% and sold more than 200,000 tons of grain on the export market. It also agreed to supply 8,000 tons of emergency food to Uganda, where the harvest had been destroyed during the chaos of Tanzania's war against Idi Amin. When last year's cereal crop fell short by 400,000 tons, largely because farmers...
True, Soviet agriculture is plagued by climatic problems beyond the control of any government. Though the lush fields of the Ukraine produce grain in abundance, much of the country's arable land lies in far northern latitudes, where enormous swings in seasonal temperatures and erratic rainfall can lead to variations of as much as 40% in annual harvest yields. The geographical and climatic problems are compounded by the system's self-inflicted wounds of rule by decree...
When small problems in agriculture or industry fester into large ones, the Soviet bureaucracy revs up huge counterattacks that become economic overkill. Whenever Soviet grain harvests exceed expectations, for example, officials scour the countryside commandeering manpower and trucks from projects that they have to temporarily abandon...