The "Great Grain Robbery"

In 1974 the United Nations held a major UN World Food Conference in Rome. The Rome conference discussed two main themes, largely on the initiative of the United States. The first was supposedly alarming population growth in the context of world food shortages, a one-sided formulation of the problem. The second theme was how to deal with sudden changes in world food supply and rises in prices. Prices for oil and grains were both rising on international markets at annual rates of 300 to 400% at that time.

A convenient if unintended consequence of the food crisis, was a strategic increase in the geopolitical power of the world's largest food surplus producer, the United States, over the world food supply and, hence, global food prices. It was during this time that a new alliance grew up between private US-based grain trading companies and the US Government. That alliance laid the ground for the later gene revolution.

The "Great Grain Robbery" As Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger had made an internal power play to control US agriculture policy, traditionally the domain of the US Department of Agriculture. Kissinger did this through his role in negotiating huge US grain sales to the Soviet Union in exchange fot Russian oil, in the months before the Rome Food Conference.

The Soviets agreed to buy an unprecedented 30 million tons of grain from the United States under the Kissinger deal. The amounts were so huge that Washington turned to the private grain traders like Cargill, not to its usual Government reserves, to sell Russia the needed grain. That was part of the Kissinger plan. As an aide to Kissinger explained at the time, "Agriculture policy is too important to be left in the hands of the Agriculture Department."

The Soviet grain sale was so large that it depleted world reserves and allowed the trading companies to raise wheat and rice prices by 70% and more in a matter of months. Wheat went from $65 a ton to $110 a ton. Soybean prices doubled. At the same time, severe drought had cut the grain harvests in India, China, Indonesia,

Bangladesh, Australia and other countries. The world was desperate for imported grain and Washington was preparing to take advantage of that desperation to radically change world food markets and food trade.

The deal was called the "great grain robbery" in reference to the overly friendly terms of sale to Moscow and the low price that year paid to US farmers for the same grain. Kissinger had negotiated the Soviet sale with the enticement of generous US Export-Import Bank credits and other subsidies.6

The big winners were the US-based grain traders such as Cargill, Archer Daniels Midland, Bunge and Continental Grain, who emerged as true global agribusiness giants. Kissinger's new food diplomacy created a global agriculture market for the first time. This potential,for power and control over whole areas of the planet was not lost on the US establishment, least of all, not on Kissinger.

In 1974 the world was reeling under the shock of the 400% increase in world oil prices, a shock Kissinger had more than a little to do with from behind the scenes.?

During this period, as world oil prices were going through the roof, there was a catastrophic world harvest failure. The Soviet grain harvest had been devastated through crop failure and other problems. The United States was the world's only major surplus supplier of wheat and other agriculture commodities. It marked a major shift for Washington agriculture export policy.

Kissinger was both Secretary of State and National Security Adviser to the President in early 1974. The Secretary of Agriculture was Earl Lauer Butz, a friend of agribusiness, an avid promoter of population control, a racist whose remarks about blacks cost him his job, and who later was convicted for tax evasion.

Time magazine on November 11, 1974, concluded a special report on the world food crisis, explaining why they were in favor of triage, the wartime practice of deciding which war-wounded . can survive and which left to die: