[Vision2020] Something for Palouse Farmers to Think About

[Tom Hansen]

WIth thanks to Tom Trail . . .

>From Breitbart at:

http://tinyurl.com/5whnp8

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Drought stricken, Iran buys US wheat for first time in 27 years

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http://tinyurl.com/5axznm
An elderly Iranian woman sits in front of her house in the vilage of 
Soufian. Gorgan is the center of an intensively cultivated farming region 
whose major commercial crops are wheat, cotton, and fruit. Wracked by 
drought, Iran has turned to the United States for wheat for the first time 
in 27 years, marking a setback for Tehran's search for agricultural self-
sufficiency.

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Wracked by drought, Iran has turned to the United States for wheat for the 
first time in 27 years, marking a setback for Tehran's search for 
agricultural self-sufficiency. 

According to a recent US Department of Agriculture report, Iran has bought 
about 1.18 million tonnes of US hard wheat since the beginning of the 2008-
2009 crop season in June. 

The number, which has been growing steadily all summer, already represents 
nearly 5.0 percent of US annual exports forecast by the USDA. 

The last time Iran imported US wheat was in 1981-1982. 

"Number one -- they need to import a large amount of wheat," said Bill 
Nelson, a grains market analyst at Wachovia Securities. "If they need 
wheat right now, the US is the place to go." 

According to Nelson, Iran's wheat production has been hammered by several 
months of drought, with crop forecasts of roughly 10 million tonnes this 
year, about five million tonnes short of the country's needs. 

US wheat was the first to arrive on the markets, ahead of wheat from the 
European Union, Russia and Ukraine, and well before that from Australia, 
where the harvest is several months away. 


Although Iran is subject to a growing number of sanctions imposed by 
Western countries that want Tehran to suspend its nuclear enrichment 
program, these US grain exports, like those of medications, are "legal and 
encouraged," a State Department spokesman, Robert McInturff, told AFP. 

They require authorization from the Treasury because of a law Congress 
approved in 2000, the Trade Sanctions Reform and Export Enhancement Act 
(TSRA), he noted. 

"The idea of that in 2000 was to promote certain types of exports to 
sanctioned countries, so there would be food, medicine, agricultural 
products, medical products," McInturff said. 

Wachovia's Nelson underscored the tense US-Iranian relationship for many 
years: "it is still surprising that they are buying wheat from the US 
instead of waiting to buy wheat from someone else." 

Analysts noted that Tehran could have used an intermediary, like Syria, to 
import US wheat to avoid having the sale recorded in official data. 

"Maybe the relationship between Iran and the US is not as terrible as it 
has been," Nelson said. 

In fact, a senior US diplomat took the unusual step of sitting at a 
negotiating table with Iranians in July. The United States is also 
considering sending diplomatic personnel to Tehran. 

The United States has not had diplomatic relations with Iran since 1980 
following the Islamic Revolution. 

For Djavad Salehi-Isfahani, a specialist on Iran at the Brookings 
Institution, a Washington think tank, the US wheat purchase signals "Iran 
is more interested in showing to its people that it is not restrained by 
sanctions." 

"The real signal is: look, we're doing fine, we can buy wheat from the 
US!," he said. 

However, the message for internal politics was grim, he said. 

"This is a serious setback for Iran from a domestic point of view because 
they made a big deal about self-sufficiency in grains." 

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Seeya round town, Moscow.

Tom Hansen
Moscow, Idaho

"We're a town of about 23,000 with 10,000 college students. The college 
students are not very active in local elections (thank goodness!)."

- Dale Courtney (March 28, 2007)


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