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We will bury you, but first let's look at your hybrid cornIn 1959, the leader of the feared Soviet Union, Nikita Khrushchev, toured the United States. He, and his entourage, stopped in Iowa for the purpose of visiting a friend, Roswell Garst. The Garst name remains today as a successful seed company; but, 50 years ago Roswell Garst was known as a strong advocate for hybrid corn and a quirky personality, who believed that it was a good idea to give food production technology to the Soviets. "Hungry people are dangerous people," was Garst's simple truth that has borne the test of time. The spectacle of the visit is being documented on its 50th anniversary by historians and remembered by the few who were there or were told of it by their parents or co-workers. The trip was not just Iowa but moved from Disneyland to confrontation in New York. Khrushchev was said to be a moody leader who would show great joy and humor and then turn toward the other pole of his personality if something displeased him. He seemed most pleased about the U.S. trip when in Coon Rapids, Iowa, home of the Garst family. In my travels to the Soviet Union, beginning in the mid- 1980s, the former leaders were documented with folk art paintings and stacking dolls made for sale to foreigners. The small wooden dolls are egg shaped with each leader hollowed out to allow the previous to fit into the two-piece shell. They go all the way back to Lenin, then Stalin, and third is Khrushchev. His image is painted on the exterior with a small ear of corn depicting his legacy. It reveals a great deal about the man and his link to the American Midwest. Khrushchev is known for opening the "new lands" of the empire and building up collective farms into huge operations. He saw American agricultural technology not as a threat but as a tool to allow his people to feed themselves. Perhaps he looked at it as a means to reduce dependence on unfriendly nations and perhaps he saw our food self-sufficiency as a strategic strength. Either way, he was interested in the U.S. agricultural system, the land- grant colleges and our budding technology to increase production. If Roswell Garst had shunned him, or the U.S. government had forbidden the export of hybrid seed, would it have changed the course of human history? If events had gone differently, we might not be worrying about global warming today because we would just now be emerging from nuclear winter. Both countries had the means to annihilate each other but we managed to share food rather than wage war. The way things played out was fortuitous for both Russia and America. As a reporter from Kansas, when I made my first trips to the Soviet Union, I was much more aware of the Khrushchev era expansion of wheat production in the Ukraine and other dry, but fertile, regions. But in our 1986 trip, we visited a farm that was also producing corn. The interpreter was not knowledgeable of agriculture and the translation broke down until a Pioneer executive, with an agronomy background, examined the ears and speculated that they were seed corn lines--this was confirmed by the collective farm manager, and the tour continued with great interest as to their progress, since the first Garst seed was planted in the 1950s. Nikita Khrushchev and Roswell Garst are now characters of history. They were larger than life, in life, and often forgotten, in death, for what they actually accomplished. What they stood for may be lost on the masses as the independent and adversarial Garst has evolved into a seed company owned by Syngenta, a biotech conglomerate. The prickly Soviet leader, who accepted American food technology, is now a character of a fallen empire, holding an ear of corn or a Matryoshka doll. We were supposed to be unable to feed ourselves by the 1970s. We were supposed to destroy civilization with the atomic bomb. Neither has come to pass, perhaps because of the realization by two men that we are far more alike in our basic needs than we are different in our political philosophy. Editor's Note: This is Ken Root's 35th year as an agricultural reporter. He grew up on a small farm in central Oklahoma and started his career as a vocational agriculture teacher. He worked in Oklahoma, Kansas and Missouri as a broadcaster and was the original host of AgriTalk. He has also been the executive director of the National AgriChemical Retailers Association in Washington, D.C. and the National Association of Farm Broadcasters in Kansas City. Ken is now the lead farm broadcaster at WHO and WMT Radio based in Des Moines, Iowa. He has been a columnist for HPJ and Midwest Ag Journal for eight years.
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