The grain trade refers to the local and international trade in cereals such as wheat, barley, maize, and rice, and other food grains. 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 food systems as well as important role in animal feed for animal agriculture.
Bidders at the Minneapolis Grain Exchange in 1939
Concrete-Central Elevator of Buffalo, New York with a 4,500,000 bushel capacity built by Monarch Engineering Company before January 1919
While once grain was sold by the sack, it is now moved in bulk in huge ships like this.
Hopper-bottomed railcars, such are this one from Japan, have made moving grain much faster and less labour-intensive.
Trade involves the transfer of goods and services from one person or entity to another, often in exchange for money. Economists refer to a system or network that allows trade as a market.
The San Juan de Dios Market in Guadalajara, Jalisco
The Liberty to Trade as Buttressed by National Law (1909) by George Howard Earle, Jr.
A busy market in Mile 12. Lagos - Nigeria
Ancient Etruscan "aryballoi" terracota vessels unearthed in the 1860s at Bolshaya Bliznitsa tumulus near Phanagoria, South Russia (formerly part of the Bosporan Kingdom of Cimmerian Bosporus, present-day Taman Peninsula); on exhibit at the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg