Snookered by Commissars

By Wiliam Doerner

AMBER WAVES OF GRAIN

by JAMES TRACER 256 pages. Arthur Fields. $6.95.

In the summer of 1972, a team of Russian trade officials operating out of a New York Hilton Hotel suite coolly bought up--at bargain prices--one-quarter of the entire U.S. wheat crop. Their accomplishment is still being paid for in the form of appallingly high food prices by U.S consumers. The deal, moreover, probably helped bring about a long-overdue end to the era of taxpayer-subsidized underproduction on U.S. farms. The story of how the Soviets nearly managed to corner the market of a U.S. staple under the noncollectivized noses of agriculture officials, grain exporters and the President of the U.S. makes an engrossing book. Richard Nixon, in fact, is quoted as having bitterly remarked, "We were snookered."

Some of the most interesting parts of the story are still a mystery -- "John Smith," for example. In the midst of all the secret haggling between the Soviets and the grain companies, Morton I. Sosland, the editor of a key trade paper in the milling and baking industry, began receiving transatlantic phone calls to Kansas City from Mr. Smith, who claimed to be a British journalist with inside dope on the bargaining. Smith's name and job proved to be phony. But his information on the ultrasensitive purchases was amazingly accurate, and it helped get out to a broader business audience the story of their true dimensions for the first time.

Who was Smith? No one yet knows. Trager gives some credence to the theory that he was a Russian operative trying to force up the price of U.S. wheat (by then the Soviets had preliminary agreements on most of their buy orders) in an attempt to keep the Chinese from entering the market too. Paranoid fantasy? Perhaps. Still, the Chinese did indeed hold up on some planned U.S. wheat purchases when the prices began spinning upward. Trager, an American gourmet and journalist, is the author of a vast international compendium of nourishment called The Food Book (1970). This volume is briefer -- and more palatable. . William Doerner

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