It was a time of east-west tension and military confrontation, but one of the most amazing features of the Cold War was the Great Grain Robbery.
That 50-year-old event is the subject of a novel written by long-time commodity trader and risk management consultant Russ Crawford, and it has the feel of a spy thriller with political intrigue.
“I tried for that,” said Crawford about how he came to write a novel about the famous grain sales, rather than a non-fiction historical account.
What’s now known as the Great Grain Robbery of 1973 was a set of enormous grain purchases from the United States and the capitalist West to feed the people of the Soviet Union, who were facing starvation due to a massive crop failure.
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The challenge for the Soviets was to hide the fact of the crop failure and lock up purchases of western grain before the market caught on and sent prices shooting higher.
“It came down on the shoulders of one team to try to make that happen without driving markets (higher) and exhausting their treasury,” said Crawford.
On one side were the Soviet purchasers and on the other grain merchants from Cargill, Continental Grain and other western companies.
Crawford’s novel focuses on a newbie trader at Cargill and a Soviet grain buyer, as well as portraying events and discussions in corporate boardrooms and in the Soviet politburo.
“There were a lot of people involved in this,” said Crawford. Some of those included sources for the book, including a Russian “deep throat” character that Crawford met through a colleague.
Cargill Canada’s former head Dick Dawson was one of many sources on the western side.
Crawford remembers that time when he was a first-year employee at Cargill.
“I was there for those early days,” said Crawford.
Once the size of the Soviet purchases were perceived by the market, grain prices shot through the roof, laying the foundation for an almost decade-long bull market in crops. For western Canadian farmers, those were good years.
Capturing the feeling of that tumultuous time, when grain became the most important commodity of the Cold War, was Crawford’s aim.
“It was a pivotal time in agriculture.”
