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The grain trade refers to the local and international trade in such as wheat, barley, maize, rice, and other . Grain is an important trade item because it is easily stored and transported with limited spoilage, unlike other agricultural products. Healthy grain supply and trade is important to many societies, providing a caloric base for most as well as important role in animal feed for animal agriculture.
The grain trade began as early as agricultural settlement, identified in many of the early cultures that adopted sedentary farming. Major societal changes have been directly connected to the grain trade, such as the fall of the Roman Empire. From the early modern period onward, grain trade has been an important part of Colonialism and foreign policy. The geopolitical dominance of countries like Australia, the United States, Canada, and the Soviet Union during the 20th century was connected with their status as grain surplus countries.
More recently, Commodity market have been an important part of the dynamics of and Food prices. Speculation, as well as other compounding production and supply factors leading up to the 2008 financial crisis, created rapid inflation of grain prices during the 2007–2008 world food price crisis. More recently, the dominance of Ukraine and Russia in grain markets such as wheat meant that the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 caused increased fears of a global food crises in 2022. Changes to agriculture caused by climate change are expected to have cascading effects on global grain markets.
Merchant shipping was important for the carriage of grain in the classical period (and continues to be so). A Ancient Rome merchant ship could carry a cargo of grain the length of the Mediterranean for the cost of moving the same amount 15 miles by land. The large cities of the time could not exist without the supplies delivered. For example, in the first three centuries AD, Rome consumed about 150,000 tons of Egyptian grain each year.
During the classical age, the unification of Qin dynasty, and the pacification of the Mediterranean basin by the Roman Empire created vast regional markets in commodities at either end of Eurasia. The grain supply to the city of Rome was considered to be of the utmost strategic importance to Roman generals and politicians. In Europe, with the fall of the Roman Empire and the rise of feudalism, many farmers were reduced to a subsistence level, producing only enough to fulfill their obligation to their lord and tithe, with little for themselves, and even less for trading. The little that was traded was moved around locally at regular .
During this time, debate over and free trade in grain was fierce. Poor industrial workers relied on cheap bread for sustenance, but farmers wanted their government to create a higher local price to protectionism, resulting in legislation such as Britain's Corn Laws.
As Britain and other European countries industrialized and the urban population increased, they became net importers of grain from the various of the world. In many parts of Europe, as serfdom was abolished, great estates were accompanied by many inefficient , but in the newly colonized regions massive operations were available to not only great nobles, but also to the average farmer. In the United States and Canada, the Homestead Act and the Dominion Lands Act allowed pioneers on Interior Plains to gain tracts of (1/4 of a square mile) or more for little or no fee. This moved grain production, and hence trading, to a much more massive scale. were built to take in farmers' produce and move it out via the railways to port. Transportation costs were a major concern for farmers in remote regions, however, and any technology that allowed the easier movement of grain was of great assistance; meanwhile, farmers in Europe struggled to remain competitive while operating on a much smaller scale.
At the same time in the Soviet Union and soon after in China, disastrous collectivization programs effectively turned the world's largest farming nations into net importers of grain. By the second half of the 20th century, the grain trade was divided between a few state-owned and privately owned giants. The state giants were Exportkhleb of the Soviet Union, the Canadian Wheat Board, the Australian Wheat Board, the Australian Barley Board, and so on. The largest private companies, known as the "big five", were Cargill, Continental, Louis Dreyfus, Bunge Limited, and Andre, an older European company not to be confused with the more recent André Maggi Group from Brazil.
In 1972, the Soviet Union's wheat crop failed. To prevent shortages in their country, Soviet authorities were able to buy most of the surplus American harvest through private companies without the knowledge of the United States government. This drove up prices across the world, and was dubbed the "great grain robbery" by critics. Subsequently, Americans paid greater attention to large trading companies.
By contrast, in 1980, the US government attempted to use its food power to punish the Soviet Union for its invasion of Afghanistan with an embargo on grain exports. This was seen as a failure in terms of foreign policy and negatively impacted American farmers.
Modern issues affecting the grain trade include food security concerns, the increasing use of biofuels, the controversy over how to properly store and separate genetically modified and organic food crops, the local food movement, the desire of developing countries to achieve market access in industrialized economies, climate change and drought, shifting agricultural patterns, and the development of new crops.
Similarly, protections in other contexts, such as guaranteed prices for grains in India, have been an important lifeline for small farmers in the context of further industrialization of agriculture. When the BJP Party government of Narendra Modi attempted to repeal guaranteed prices for farmers on key grains like wheat, farmers throughout the country rose in protest.
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