Craig Morris (Author)
David Bolingbroke (Author)
Agricultural History
Volume: 96
Issue: 3
Pages: 417-443
This article deepens our understanding of Cold War–era agricultural history by examining the relationship between Pacific Northwest soft white wheat and Japanese importers and consumers. Recent historiography of wheat during the Cold War has focused on telling how the United States turned to wheat exports in the “developing world” as a tool and weapon to achieve US hegemony and negate the influence of the Soviet Union. This article argues that the Pacific Northwest wheat industry's relationship with wheat consumers and importers in Japan shifts the Cold War wheat narrative away from staples like bread to confectionary products made with soft white flour. Japanese buyers and consumers purchased soft white wheat not to feed the hungry but instead to serve a growing market for cakes and other confectionary products. This relationship helps understand the current wheat market in the Pacific Northwest, where soft white wheat exports dominate.
...MoreSimilar Citations
Article
Arnaud Page;
Maxime Guesnon;
(2021)
Glutenophilia: Chemistry and Flour Quality in Nineteenth-century France and Great Britain
(/isis/citation/CBB182520730/)
Book
Heidi Tinsman;
(2014)
Buying into the Regime: Grapes and Consumption in Cold War Chile and the United States
(/isis/citation/CBB383615341/)
Book
Bryan L. McDonald;
(2016)
Food Power: The Rise and Fall of the Postwar American Food System
(/isis/citation/CBB483621388/)
Book
Cullather, Nick;
(2010)
The Hungry World: America's Cold War Battle against Poverty in Asia
(/isis/citation/CBB001212219/)
Article
Ito Atsushi;
(2021)
Japanese Market Development Programs under PL 480 in the late 1950s: Focus on Wheat and Rice
(/isis/citation/CBB185787791/)
Article
Robert Suits;
(2023)
Hoboes, Wheat, and Climate Precarity, 1870–1922
(/isis/citation/CBB795320228/)
Book
Courtney Fullilove;
(2017)
The Profit of the Earth: The Global Seeds of American Agriculture
(/isis/citation/CBB998599024/)
Book
Marci Baranski;
(2022)
The Globalization of Wheat: A Critical History of the Green Revolution
(/isis/citation/CBB031473898/)
Thesis
Adina Popescu;
(2014)
Casting Bread Upon the Waters: American Farming and the International Wheat Market, 1880–1920
(/isis/citation/CBB457793631/)
Book
Mario Jimenez Sifuentez;
(2016)
Of Forests and Fields: Mexican Labor in the Pacific Northwest
(/isis/citation/CBB044049827/)
Book
Linda Civitello;
(2017)
Baking Powder Wars: The Cutthroat Food Fight that Revolutionized Cooking
(/isis/citation/CBB541057568/)
Article
Carolyn Ann Cobbold;
(2018)
The Rise of Alternative Bread Leavening Technologies in the Nineteenth Century
(/isis/citation/CBB931973305/)
Article
Gaspa, Salvatore;
(2011)
Bread for Gods and Kings: On Baked Products in Profane and Cultic Consumption of Ancient Assyria
(/isis/citation/CBB001320884/)
Article
Francks, Penelope;
(2013)
Simple Pleasures: Food Consumption in Japan and the Global Comparison of Living Standards
(/isis/citation/CBB001421533/)
Article
Teresa da Silva Lopes;
Shin Tomita;
(2022)
Trademarks as “Global Merchants of Skill”: The Dynamics of the Japanese Match Industry, 1860s–1930s
(/isis/citation/CBB447474120/)
Book
Douglas Southgate;
Lois Roberts;
(2016)
Globalized Fruit, Local Entrepreneurs: How One Banana-Exporting Country Achieved Worldwide Reach
(/isis/citation/CBB296124187/)
Book
Carlo Fumian;
(2024)
Pane quotidiano. L'invisibile mercato mondiale del grano tra XIX e XX secolo
(/isis/citation/CBB087774034/)
Article
Justin Niermeier-Dohoney;
(2022)
“To Multiply Corn Two-Hundred-Fold”: The Alchemical Augmentation of Wheat Seeds in Seventeenth-Century English Husbandry
(/isis/citation/CBB484908668/)
Book
Catherine Zabinski;
(2020)
Amber Waves: The Extraordinary Biography of Wheat, from Wild Grass to World Megacrop
(/isis/citation/CBB726615759/)
Book
Marci Baranski;
(2019)
Globalizing Wheat: Success and Failure of the Green Revolution
(/isis/citation/CBB650890415/)
Be the first to comment!