
Great Grain Robbery (1972) - zeristor
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_grain_robbery
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rmason
Earl Butz is a hero to most farmers because when prices shot up they made more
money than they ever had in a lifetime. In Michigan navy beans shot up 700%.

I had a farmer recount to me once that he went out with a broom and got enough
beans from the bottom of a grain bin to fill the trunk of his car. He told me
that trunk full brought him more cash than an entire gravity box wagon the
year before!

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londons_explore
While in this case, the soviets came out ahead, the deal was not inherently
unfair.

It appears the price was set based on market rates on the day the deal was
done. In effect, the USA just sold all the grain on that day, more than they
actually had, not on the actual day of delivery. They just issued a futures
contract.

Had the price of grain fallen on world markets, the soviets would have lost
out.

~~~
ggreer
If the price of grain had fallen, the Soviet Union would have purchased it
from other countries at market rates. Only after they had exhausted other
countries' grain surpluses would they have bought from the US.

~~~
einpoklum
The GP is talking about prices falling after, not before, the purchase.

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zeristor
As mentioned in this NASA training video on Remote Sensing for agriculture:

[https://youtu.be/pdR4GbMcRiM](https://youtu.be/pdR4GbMcRiM)

~~~
dmos62
Anyone aware of European datasets coming from agricultural remote sensing? I'd
also be interested in forest land datasets.

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einpoklum
Wikipedia says that "The problem was heightened by the fact that only a small
fraction of the Soviet Union was able to be farmed"

Really? I though that, until the mid-century at least, the vast majority of
the population of the USSR were farmers.

I mean, ok, of course they grey other things as well, but still - that sounds
strange.

~~~
dmos62
Yeah, not sure what to make of that. Apparently this is a reference to the
black earth belt
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernozem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernozem)).
The article isn't particularly well written. Why only the Chernozem belt can
be farmed (short term climate conditions maybe?)? What kind of mismanagement
USSR exhibited that led to massive grain shortage on their end?

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sdwr
Would you steal a loaf of bread to feed your family? Would anyone try to stop
you? What about a billion loaves?

~~~
dmos62
The robbery is in reference to giving away US money to US grain companies.

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valuearb
Why would we subsidize the USSR during the Cold War? Why not require some
political concessions first?

~~~
magicsmoke
In the context of the times, the late 60s-early 70s were a time of political
concession from both the USSR and the US. This was the Detente period of the
Cold War, when the two sides were trying to sign nuclear arms treaties to
avoid mutual annihilation like they faced during the Cuban missile crisis as
well as the expense involved with making tens of thousands of nukes, and the
US was trying to pull itself out of Vietnam and needed good relations with the
USSR to make sure they wouldn't have to fight a 2nd Vietnam war if the USSR
decided to push the spread of global communism. The grain export deal was just
one piece in the puzzle.

~~~
valuearb
Each piece should have had its own concession.

~~~
magicsmoke
That's the kind of inflexible deal-making that makes negotiation impossible in
real life. Sometimes I wish time machine simulations were real so we could
send people back in the past and let them try their hand at navigating
historical global crises. That'll be sure to teach some humility after the
umpteenth time the world gets nuked.

~~~
valuearb
The USSR was responsible for spreading death and oppression through out the
world. It finally collapsed due to its failed economic system. Subsidies
delayed that collapse, delayed the freedom of hundreds of millions and
allowing more deaths.

No one was nuking anyone, the Soviet leadership was just trying to maintain
their decadent lifestyles at the expense of their peoples.

~~~
magicsmoke
hindsight is always 20/20.

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pastablister
Regional food shortages can have a global ripple effect. Sound familiar?

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alskdjfsdfj
why the term robbery?

just because the seller couldn't detect a weakness on the buyer and
artificially inflate the prices it is considered a robbery? Does someone who
will need a car for a job or lose the house for non-payment "rob" the car
dealership for not disclosing they really need that car they are purchasing at
market price?

IMO, the robbery is that the business people consulted for the deal saw only
the big sale and the possibility to get their costs subsidized (for what
reason that was even offered by the govt?!) and they indeed made a nice profit
and were not affected by the internal price hike as they were sellers, not
buyers, while the US public lost 300mi subsidizing this mess and paying the
higher prices. Indeed a robbery.

~~~
code_duck
“Author Martha Hamilton introduced the term as the title of Chapter VII of her
book The Great American Grain Robbery & Other Stories, as part of an
allegation that the U.S. government was robbing American taxpayers in order to
support grain trading companies.”

~~~
myself248
Which in itself is a reference to a 1903 silent film The Great Train Robbery,
widely considered to be the first of what we'd now recognize as an action
film, and the first western.

~~~
twic
The wikipedia article says:

> The term Great Grain Robbery is a pun referring to the "Great Train Robbery"
> novel

The novel in question being a 1975 one by Michael Crichton! Being British, to
me, the term refers to an infamous train robbery in 1963. I don't know if that
incident is well known in the US.

Presumably, though, both those uses are references to the film.

~~~
vijayr02
Michael Crichton's novel references a British train robbery from Victorian
times:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Gold_Robbery](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Gold_Robbery)

The 1903 movie referenced is a separate dramatisation of a US robbery:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Train_Robbery_(1903_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Train_Robbery_\(1903_film\))

