"When Russia Met Iowa" The Des Moines Register, February 15, 2009
By JERRY PERKINS
Fifty years ago this fall, on a farm near Coon Rapids in west-central Iowa, the United States and the Soviet Union - the world's two superpowers and sworn enemies - took a step back from the brink of nuclear annihilation by promoting peace through corn.
To mark the 50th anniversary of the historic, Sept. 23, 1959, visit of Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev to the Coon Rapids farm of hybrid seed-corn salesman Roswell "Bob" Garst, Garst's grand-daughters and others are organizing a three-day commemoration of the event.
The 1959 visit showcased the rapidly growing productivity of agriculture in post-World War II America fostered by progress in plant breeding, adoption of fertilizer and herbicides and rapid advances in the mechanization of farm implements.
By hosting a Soviet premier who had threatened to "bury" capitalism, Roswell Garst also proved that citizen diplomacy, when it is practiced by a persistent and persuasive advocate, can advance peaceful coexistence among even the most bitter adversaries.
"Celebrating the 50th anniversary of Khrushchev's visit represents a unique occasion to celebrate our state's citizenry, its history and its progressive role in the world," said Rachel Garst, Roswell Garst's granddaughter. "It also promises to be a chance to continue Iowa's traditions of international exchanges and citizen diplomacy."
Rachel Garst said her grandfather was a committed capitalist who preached using the latest technologies to boost food production. Roswell Garst sold hybrid seed corn - at a profit, Rachel Garst emphasized - to anyone who might benefit, even if that meant doing business with an enemy.
"Roswell lost business when he sold that corn to the Soviet Union, but he did not care," said Rachel Garst. "He still thought trading with the Russians was more practical than aiming missiles at them. And, he thought helping the Soviets develop their agricultural economy could only make them a more stable country. My grandfather always said, 'Hungry people are dangerous people.' "
Feeding Soviet citizens a struggle
Khrushchev had come to power in the Soviet Union in 1955, two years after Stalin's death left a vacuum of power in the country. The USSR had been bled white by World War II. Agriculture there had suffered from Stalin's emphasis on the Soviet military and industrialization, both coming at the expense of agriculture.
Feeding its people was still a challenge for the Soviet Union when Khrushchev muscled his way through a crowded field to replace Stalin and he put a new emphasis on boosting agricultural production to raise more corn, meat, eggs and milk.
The 1959 visit to Coon Rapids came about because "Bob" Garst - private U.S. citizen and hybrid seed corn's first super-salesman - had forged a friendship and business relationship with Comrade Khrushchev based on a common passion: raising corn.
The visit was several years in the making, according to Elizabeth "Liz" Garst, who is named for her grandmother, Roswell's wife.
Soon after Khrushchev came to power, Liz Garst said, he complimented U.S. agriculture and suggested that the Soviet Union needed an Iowa Corn Belt. The world press picked up the remark and reported it extensively, Liz Garst said, because it was the first time a Soviet leader had said anything good about the U.S. since the Cold War began in 1946.
Prize-winning editorial leads to exchanges
Lauren Soth, who was then editor of the editorial page of The Des Moines Register, responded with an editorial prodding the Soviet Union to compete in a race to raise the most corn, instead of a race to produce the most bombs. Soth was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 1956 for the editorial. The Kremlin took note.
Farm exchanges between the two countries ensued and Roswell Garst parlayed meetings with Soviet agriculturalists into a meeting with Khrushchev at the Kremlin. Garst sold some seed corn to Khrushchev, who paid for it in cash.
"The two men hit it off ...; they were really quite alike," Liz Garst recalls in an oral history she tells to visitors to the Garst farm. "They were absolutely passionate about agriculture and the land and food production. They were both big-idea men, not into the details. They both liked to argue for fun, they liked to duel ideas. They both were quite gregarious, and quite cantankerous. They were both showmen. And, they were both very much peasants; neither of them were refined men. To tell you the truth, they were both kind of crude."
Khrushchev planted the seed corn he bought from Garst all over the Soviet Union. It failed miserably, mostly because the Soviet Union is too far north and has too dry a climate to be able to replicate the U.S. Corn Belt's productivity. Its system of collective farms also lacked the efficiency of American farms.
Liz Garst said that a joke from this era in the Soviet Union has someone saying to Mrs. Khrushchev, "Your husband is planting corn every place but on the moon." Mrs. Khrushchev replies: "Shhh! Don't give him the idea!"
Garst was invited back to the Soviet Union twice more and, in 1958, Khrushchev asked Roswell to bring his wife Elizabeth along.
Iowa welcomes the Khrushchevs
After enjoying the hospitality of Khrushchev and his wife, Nina, at their vacation home on the Black Sea, Elizabeth Garst invited the Khrushchevs to visit the Garsts at their farm in Coon Rapids.
When Khrushchev asked to travel to the U.S. in 1959, he requested visits to Disneyland, the Garst farm and the United Nations. After much discussion, permission was granted.
The Khrushchevs were rudely treated in California, Liz Garst said, and Khrushchev was denied his trip to Disneyland, allegedly because of security reasons.
"In Iowa, we treated him very nicely," Liz Garst recalled. Khrushchev spent two days in Iowa, visiting Iowa State University, Deere & Co.'s plant in Ankeny, the Bookey Packing plant in Des Moines and another farm near Indianola. He spent the night at the Hotel Fort Des Moines and, on Sept. 23, 1959, spent all day at the Garst farm.
Liz Garst said she thinks that Khrushchev had several reasons for coming to Coon Rapids.
First, he had been invited by Elizabeth Garst. "But the real reason he came here was to send the message to his own people that it was OK for a good communist to look to the West for technology, particularly agricultural technology," Liz Garst said. "Nobody ever disputed that Khrushchev was a good communist ... so he could get away with sending this message. He had the visit to the (Garst) farm made into books, magazines and movies and taught to every schoolchild in the Soviet Union for 20 years after the visit. Garst was a household name in the Soviet Union during the 1960s and 1970s."
Her grandfather also had a couple of motives for doing business with the Soviet Union, Liz Garst said.
Although he was often called a "commie sympathizer," he was not. "To the contrary, he was such a capitalist that he would even sell to the 'dirty dog communists,' " Liz Garst said. "One of his main motives in this whole thing was to make money, to make a profit."
The second motive stemmed from Roswell Garst's belief that the arms race was wrong.
"Roswell hated the arms race and felt that we should be trading with these people, integrating them into the world economy," Liz Garst said. "He really believed that anybody who was hungry was not going to just sit back on his heels and starve to death, but was going to go and find food wherever he could, like in Eastern Europe. The world would remain essentially destabilized as long as there was somebody out there trying to get food no matter what."
Thaw in Cold War was brief
The Soviet premier's visit to the Garst farm marked a brief thaw in the long and potentially lethal Cold War waged for 45 years until the Soviet Union imploded in 1991.
Khrushchev's failure to replicate the American miracle of ever-increasing agricultural production was one of the major reasons he was deposed in 1964. Khrushchev died in relative obscurity in 1971.
But Khrushchev's failed experiment with corn had long-lasting repercussions in the Soviet Union, and here in Iowa.
Unable to produce enough food at home, the Soviets imported large quantities of food from the United States in the 1970s, which helped touch off a boom in farmland prices in Iowa and much of the Corn Belt.
When the land bubble burst in the early 1980s, the Farm Crisis that ensued threw a generation of Iowa farmers under the wheels of financial ruin and foreclosure.
Advances in plant science and other technologies have also hastened the growth of the Iowa family farm into the mega-operations of today.
Roswell Garst died in 1977, before farming operations would cover thousands of acres. The drop in the number of farmers also hastened the demise of many small Iowa towns that depended on farmers for their economic viability.
John Chrystal, Roswell's nephew, continued Garst's work in the Soviet Union after Roswell's health failed. In her oral history, Liz says, "John went a total of 60 times in his life as an advisor to the Soviet Union on food production. The commercial purpose fell by the wayside and my family became very interested in helping that country get it in gear. John died in January 2000, and that was the end of the real relationship between the Soviet Union and my family. Lots of Soviets still come through here, because they studied us in school. We are historically interesting to them, but the real relationship is over."
Garst a friend, but he spoke forthrightly
As for the thaw in the Cold War that the Coon Rapids farm visit evoked, events overtook the brief era of good feelings.
In 1960, a U-2 spy plane piloted by Francis Gary Powers would be shot down over the Soviet Union. Khrushchev and John Kennedy would lurch to the brink of nuclear war over Soviet missiles in Cuba. A series of proxy wars would be fought by the Soviet Union and the United States in Africa, Asia and Central America.
"The Cold War was terribly destructive at home and abroad," recalled Rachel Garst. "Like my grandfather, I like to assume that all people, even those we label 'evil,' are still motivated by common human goals: family, food, security, sustainable societies and a search for basic respect. Even though Roswell reached out to the Soviets as colleagues and trading partners, he still brought up tough issues like the arms race and political prisoners. But first he acted friendly. Then, as a friend, he spoke forthrightly. He was not afraid to trade with Khrushchev, and he was not afraid to talk to him person-to-person and, when it came to talking agriculture, Roswell would talk to anyone who would listen. He decided that even common citizens could build bridges abroad."
Jerry Perkins was farm editor of The Des Moines Register from June 1993-August 2008, when he asked for and received an early retirement buyout. He was public affairs director for the Iowa Corn Growers Association from 1988-92. From 1992-93, he was the first director of the U.S.-Russian Agribusiness Center in Stavropol, Russia, helping Russian farmers adjust to a market-oriented economy.
Jerry Perkins serves on the planning committee for the 50th anniversary commemoration of the Khrushchev visit to the Garst Farm.