ABSTRACT
The United States entered the 1980s dependent upon exports for just under one-fourth of total cash receipts from farm marketings and for the disposal of production from well over one-third of total crop acres harvested. The embargo figured prominently in the United States presidential election of 1980, and its termination in April 1981 was highly publicized as a major agricultural policy initiative of the new Reagan administration. The lure of the Soviet market nevertheless remains. Given this history, it seems appropriate to look critically at available evidence regarding the prospective size and durability of the Soviet market for United States agricultural exports. The well-documented shortage of agricultural chemicals in the USSR increases the probability that weed-control is prominent among the reasons for heavy seeding rates. The phenomenal increases in Soviet grain imports after 1971 have been primarily to provide livestock feed. Three components of waste are dominant: storage, transport, and prices.
