In August the Soviet government agreed to the second one-year extension of the US-USSR grain agreement, which has regulated grain trade between the two countries since 1976. Although a net exporter of grain for the best part of this century, the USSR has become increasingly dependent on imports...

In common with international agricultural trade in general the grain trade has remained immune to pressure for liberalization, and equally immune to suggestions of international management in the form of reserve stock holding, price floors and ceilings, or a full scale commodity agreement. What...