US and Soviet agriculture: the shifting balance of power

Book · Fri Jan 01 04:00:00 EST 1982

OSTI ID:5529174

Brown, L R

The dramatic shift in the agricultural balance of power between the US and Soviet Union has been decades in the making. But contrasting food surpluses and deficits have been highly visible only in the last decade or so. As recently as 1970 both countries were exporting grain - the US 38 million tons and the Soviet Union eight million tons. By 1981, however, US grain exports had humped to a staggering 115 million tons and the Soviets were importing 43 million tons. Not surprisingly, these huge food deficits trouble the Soviet leadership. In the Eleventh Five-Year Plan (1981-85), released a year late at the November 1981 meeting of the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party, General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev said food was the central problem of the whole Five-Year Plan. As the deterioration of Soviet agriculture continues, the need to import food will become even greater. Already the flow of grain from the US to the Soviet Union is on the verge of being the largest ever between two countries, about to eclipse the current US flow to Japan. The long line of ships that now connects American farms with the dining tables of the Soviet Union constitutes a new economic tie between the two countries, one that could eventually transform their political relations as well. 71 references.

• Research Organization: Worldwatch Inst., Washington, DC (USA)
• OSTI ID: 5529174
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY
290200* -- Energy Planning & Policy-- Economics & Sociology
AGRICULTURE
ASIA
CEREALS
EASTERN EUROPE
ECONOMIC POLICY
EUROPE
EXPORTS
GOVERNMENT POLICIES
GRASS
IMPORTS
INDUSTRY
NORTH AMERICA
PLANTS
SECURITY
SEEDS
USA
USSR