Word: grains
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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When it was first announced last summer, the $1.1 billion grain sale to the Soviet Union was almost universally applauded. It promised to be a boon for U.S. farmers, a welcome assist to the nation's balance of payments and a step toward warmer relations between East and West. For all its genuine long-term benefits, however, the largest two-nation grain deal in history has produced a bumper crop of trouble. Now, as public discontent grows over rising food prices, the Administration's feckless handling of the transaction is being widely condemned...
...farmers feel cheated because they let go of their wheat crop at about $1.35 a bu. in the early summer of 1972, before the Soviet purchases and heavy buying by other nations helped push the price received by farmers to more than $2 a bu. Congressmen are miffed that grain companies and ship operators collected needless federal subsidies. Shippers are recovering from a nationwide transportation tie-up that resulted from grain dealers' scrambling for freight cars to transport grain, much of it to the Soviets. Consumers have particularly good reason for anger: the deal contributed to a grain shortage...
Last month the General Accounting Office charged the Agriculture Department with "weakness in managing" the sale. Last week the Senate Permanent Investigations Subcommittee took up the grain sales in hearings marked by heated exchanges between Chairman Henry M. Jackson of Washington and Agriculture Secretary Earl Butz. Jackson called the grain sale "a monumental blunder born in Government secrecy and bureaucratic negligence...
That somewhat overstates the case. The grain deal was an important element in the Administration's policy of political as well as commercial détente with the Soviet Union. It opened up that country as a potentially important market for U.S. farm products. The sales accounted for more than one-fifth of the 60% rise in U.S. agricultural exports in the past fiscal year, to about $13 billion. The Soviet deal was not entirely responsible for the present farm shortages and sky-high prices. Japanese and Europeans bought far greater amounts than usual of U.S. agricultural goods last...
Beef Freeze. One major reason for the food price rises is that spiraling costs of animal feed, caused largely by unbridled grain exports, especially to Russia, have prompted farmers to raise less livestock than they had planned. The price freeze resulted in even lower production of hogs and chickens. Phase IV regulations, which will keep beef prices frozen until Sept. 12, will further hold down beef production. Explains Bill Jones, executive vice president of the National Livestock Feeders Association: "This blunder is likely to jeopardize supplies because feeders will hold their cattle off the market until after Sept...