After Khrushchev took power in 1953 he threw himself into corn promotion with a level of excitement that ignored practical limits. He dreamed of covering the Soviet Union with an Iowa style corn belt and in 1955 even sent a delegation to Iowa to study how Americans grew their famously productive crops. The farmer who sold seed corn to the Soviet visitors warned them to plant only in the warmer southern regions and to use large amounts of fertilizer herbicides and insecticides. Khrushchev ignored all of this and insisted on planting corn in places like Siberia and Kazakhstan where the climate and soil made success almost impossible. Because the right chemicals were not used and the conditions were entirely wrong the crops failed on a huge scale. The disaster damaged both the reputation of corn as a reliable Soviet feed crop and Khrushchev's credibility as an agricultural reformer.(Historic Vids)