"American farmer Roswell Garst hosts the head of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Nikita Khrushchev on his farm during a visit of the latter to the USA." (Yegorov, TASS Russian News Agency, 23 Sept. 1959)
Thesis
Iowa Corn Field (The Kinnick Project, N.d.)
From 1955-1960, Iowa agricultural businessman Roswell Garst and Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev forged an unlikely friendship through food diplomacy and ongoing agricultural exchanges that, despite sparking fiery public debate, successfully spurred Russian adoption of modernized farming methods, created a thaw in otherwise icy Cold War relations, and promoted a pattern of establishing peace through agriculture.
"Khrushchev with Roswell Garst, the Iowa farmer with whom the Soviet premier developed warm and informal relations in the 1950's and 1960's." (Memoirs of Nikita Khrushchev, 2007)
"We two farmers could solve the world's problems a lot better than any diplomats."
- Iowa farmer, Roswell Garst (Malcolm, The New York Times, 23 May 1972)