Grain trade

From the early modern period onward, grain trade has been an important part of colonial expansion and international power dynamics.

A Roman merchant ship could carry a cargo of grain the length of the Mediterranean for the cost of moving the same amount 15 miles by land.

[5]: 297 During the classical age, the unification of China and the pacification of the Mediterranean basin by the Roman Empire created vast regional markets in commodities at either end of Eurasia.

In Europe, with the fall of the Roman Empire and the rise of feudalism, many farmers were reduced to a subsistence level, producing only enough to fulfill their obligation to their lord and the Church, with little for themselves, and even less for trading.

In addition, the consolidation of farmland in Britain and Eastern Europe, and the development of railways and the steamship shifted trade from local to more international patterns.

At the same time in the Soviet Union and soon after in China, disastrous collectivization programs effectively turned the world's largest farming nations into net importers of grain.

To prevent shortages in their country, Soviet authorities were able to buy most of the surplus American harvest through private companies without the knowledge of the United States government.

This drove up prices across the world, and was dubbed the "great grain robbery" by critics, leading to greater public attention being paid by Americans to the large trading companies.

By contrast, in 1980, the US government attempted to use its food power to punish the Soviet Union for its invasion of Afghanistan with an embargo on grain exports.

This was seen as a failure in terms of foreign policy (the Soviets made up the deficit on the international market), and negatively impacted American farmers.

The old wooden grain elevators have been replaced by massive concrete inland terminals, and rail transportation has retreated in the face of ever larger trucks.

Modern issues affecting the grain trade include food security concerns, the increasing use of biofuels, the controversy over how to properly store and separate genetically modified and organic crops, the local food movement, the desire of developing countries to achieve market access in industrialized economies, climate change and drought shifting agricultural patterns, and the development of new crops.

"Trade policies need to incentivize investment in developing country agriculture, so that poor farmers can build resistance to future price shocks".

Ancient Egyptian art depicting a worker filling a grain silo
Ancient Roman grain
The American Elevator and Grain Trade periodical front cover of 1904
A grain elevator in Indiana , United States
Illustration of a Grain market in Tehran in 1893 from Harpers Magazine. Grain markets have been important centers of commerce in many parts of the world for the last 500 years.
Bidders at the Minneapolis Grain Exchange in 1939
Concrete-Central Elevator of Buffalo , New York with a 4,500,000 bushel capacity built by Monarch Engineering Company before January 1919
While once grain was sold by the sack, it is now moved in bulk in huge ships like this.
Hopper-bottomed railcars, such are this one from Japan, have made moving grain much faster and less labour-intensive.
A politician, Manish Tewari , visiting a grain market in the important Punjab region of India, frequently described as the breadbasket of India. India's relation to the international grain market, was an important part of the 2020–2021 Indian farmers' protest -- with many of the more active protests in the Punjab region.