Word: grained
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...Modern grain dealers can trace their roots to the Old Testament's Joseph, who advised the Pharaoh to store grain in bountiful times and release it during famines. Despite its ancient lineage, the risky business of buying, storing, shipping and selling grain has remained as obscure as it is enormous. Recently, half a dozen major grain-trading companies have been bobbing up in the news with unusual frequency because of their role as middlemen in the Soviet Union's billion-dollar purchase of U.S. wheat and other crops. The sale has also raised charges from Democrats that some...
...complexities of the grain market are too confusing to permit quick conclusions on whether the Nixon Administration's wheat deal with the Soviet Union led to improper profits and thus amounts to another scandal from which the Democrats ought to be able to reap campaign benefits. But one facet of the highly complex situation looked like a clear-cut case of conflict of interest. Two high Government officials involved in the negotiations with the Russians quit their Agriculture Department jobs to take top positions with two U.S. exporting firms that had much to gain from the Soviet sales. Last...
...initial negotiations with the Russians in Moscow in early April, discussed the sales further in Washington with the Soviet deputy of foreign trade in May, and announced his intention to resign two days later. He joined Continental on June 8 -and on July 2, he escorted the Soviet grain buyers on a sightseeing tour of Washington, D.C. On July 5, Continental sold 150 million bu. of wheat and 41 million tons of feed grains to Russia. This was three days before the Administration announced its big grain deal. After the announcement, Continental quickly sold Russia another 37 million...
Whether there was any illegal or unethical conduct is yet to be determined. There is general agreement, however, that the Russians made a shrewd deal, demonstrating intimate knowledge of the capitalistic U.S. market. They got themselves out of a serious grain shortage at bargain prices. The U.S., in return, found a new market for its grain, which will help decrease its balance of payments deficit. Most wheat farmers should benefit in the long run from the higher prices. One byproduct of the wheat and corn sales to the Russians, however, is that they will feed inflation in the U.S., particularly...
...sure, some wheat farmers are up in arms over the huge profits in the Soviet grain sale that went to big grain exporting firms rather than to them (see THE NATION). But the fact remains that President Nixon went out of his way to become the nation's No. 1 wheat salesman during his trips abroad. "The Soviet grain deal was good for the farmers," says Don Paarlberg, the Agriculture Department's economic director. "It increased prices, reduced stocks and made possible an increased opportunity to grow wheat...