Why the Soviet Union was obsessed with corn

(Archival news chatter) Why does nobody look at

me the way that he looks at corn? “Nikita Khrushchev's American tour

swings into the world's best corn country.” “On the Coon Rapids, Iowa farm of Roswell Garst.”

Why were the Soviets, and in particular, Nikita Khrushchev, obsessed with this stuff? There are

posters, and pictures, and monuments to glorify corn. And can we stop the Russian

music? (Russian music cuts out) Thank you. I thought that

this story was just funny. One weird man's obsession. But

it is way bigger than that. “The quality hybrid…”

“Whose nation has long known major food production problems…”

“Is the surest way to happy harvest.” It touches on branching paths in plant

genetics. An Iowa farmer who became a de facto international diplomat. A summit in the middle

of Iowa with souvenir corn and intrigue. “We trailed these two food tasters, did not

let them out of our sight for that entire hour.” And it changed my perspective on the Cold War by

helping me understand why this man loved corn. “The American agricultural efficiency that is

perhaps Russia's greatest envy.” The poster actually has a message

that I totally overlooked, but Aaron decoded it for me really quickly.

You see this? You know this one? “I've seen this one before. Uh, it's a gem.”

Aaron literally wrote a book about the Corn Crusade, and he set the stage for me too.

“He was running a race from behind, with a GDP the size of France. A population much,

much bigger. Yeah. As Americans, we don't…I don't claim to fully grasp the material,

psychological social effects of World War II on Soviet society. It's massive.”

Nikita Khrushchev led the USSR from 1953 to 1964. His country had been devastated,

not only by World War II, but by Stalinism. Taking farms from private to public collectivization had

caused a famine. In the early 1930s, and that was followed by another famine. It seems like

there were two main types of farms that existed. “The Sovkhoz is Is, is a state farm basically.

So it's owned by the state, run by the state, more or less directly. All the produce belongs

to the state, right? The flip side of that is then the collective farms, or again,

the Russian is collectively his days for our collect, literally collective farm.

And so that goes as Kolkhoz. They get a little less extreme with some of Khrushchev's forms,

but they are nominally owned by the members run by the members on

democratic line. Like it sounds nice. Okay. Um, the reality is none of that is true.”

The key here is that Khrushchev was running all of this. In 1953,

Time Magazine put him on the cover, with wheat, the symbol of traditional Russian agriculture.

They underscored his challenges, a shortage of cattle, a decline in pork,

and a drop in butter production. He wanted to fix this through big agricultural projects.

A virgin lands campaign focused largely in Kazakhstan, but through to western Siberia.

This was a huge and somewhat crazy campaign. Let me show you. Okay, so here is Iowa, and here is

the USSR. Now this is a simplified illustration, but let's drag over Iowa here. This area is huge.

Huge, huge, huge. He thought corn could uniquely accomplish this as sausage on the stalk. This is