Oceans Of Grain

What: A panel discussion:

  On an "incredibly timely" global history that journey’s from the Ukrainian steppe to the American prairie to show how grain built and toppled the world's largest empires. 

To understand the rise and fall of empires, we must follow the paths traveled by grain—along rivers, between ports, and across seas. In Oceans of Grain, historian Scott Nelson reveals how the struggle to dominate these routes transformed the balance of world power. 

Early in the nineteenth century, imperial Russia fed much of Europe through the booming port of Odessa, on the Black Sea in Ukraine. But following the US Civil War, tons of American wheat began to flood across the Atlantic, and food prices plummeted. This cheap foreign grain spurred the rise of Germany and Italy, the decline of the Habsburgs and the Ottomans, and the European scramble for empire. It was a crucial factor in the outbreak of the First World War and the Russian Revolution. It is still a crucial factor in today's geopolitics.\

Mike McLain will explore and explain the vast details involved in moving grain from the fields to the millis to bread on our plate.  How is it financed, how is it actually moved, to where, how stored…

WHY: A powerful new interpretation, Oceans of Grain shows that amid the great powers’ rivalries, there was no greater power than control of grain.  Does the Grain Trade matter? Hardly anything matters more. Behind so much of today's issues and wars lurks grain.

You will never see your daily bread (or history, or politics, or economics, or food, or culture) in the same light.

Bring your questions, this presentation is designed to answer the questions or the role of grain both historically and right up to the present. 

. How large is the grain trade today?

. How many acres of land is  devoted to grain production?

. What happens to the economy and culture when grain prices go up or down? Who benefits, who doesn't?

. How has grain been financed and insured? How did it all begin? 

. Who has traditionally controlled the movement of grain?

.  How much does grain really matter historically, and now in today's world?