Word: grains
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Officials ignored early evidence-including explicit and repeated warnings starting as early as February from a U.S. agriculture attaché in Moscow -that a frost-and drought-stricken harvest in 1972 would force the Soviets to make massive purchases of U.S. grain...
...Soviets dickered separately with U.S. grain companies, and the Agriculture Department did almost nothing to monitor the purchases. Thus the Soviets were able to keep U.S. businessmen and farmers in the dark about how much grain they were buying at bargain prices that were kept low by Government export subsidies. This lapse occurred even though the dimensions of the deal should have been apparent to the department. Executives of three major grain dealers-Continental Grain Co., Cargill Inc. and Louis Dreyfus Corp.-told the Jackson subcommittee last week that they had separately notified Assistant Secretary Carroll G. Brunthaver...
...Butz failed to move quickly to stop Government export subsidies to the grain companies. If the domestic wheat price exceeded a target level of about $1.63 a bu.. including transportation from the farm to Gulf ports, an exporter could claim a subsidy for the difference. When the Soviets started ordering last summer, the subsidy was about 6? a bu. Incredibly, Butz's office let the payments continue for nearly two months after the first sales, until the subsidy swelled to 47?. If the handouts had been halted, the export price of wheat would have shot...
...billion, and no small amount of the gain is traceable to the sale to the Soviets. The Soviets also profited; they may have saved as much as $100 million by buying at the low, subsidized U.S. price. But no one else made much of a killing. Continental Grain officials testified last week that the company earned "less than normal profits" on the deal. Cargill actually lost about 1? a bu. on the approximately 73 million bu. that it sold to the Soviets-in part because of snags in the export-subsidy program. For example, the subsidies did not always cover...
...deal has certainly cost U.S. consumers more in the form of higher food prices, although probably less than they suspect. Grain accounts for only about one-sixth of the retail price of bread. The increase in wheat prices since the spring of 1972 has added 1? or 2? to the retail price of a 1-lb. loaf of white bread. Other wheat-based products have gone up still more...