Since 1981, American agricultural export earnings have plummeted from $43 billion to around $29 billion for 1985, a 37 percent decline. Many factors have been offered as partial explanations for this phenomenon: a strong dollar, the continued fallout from the grain embargo placed by the Carter Administration on the Soviet Union, poor American marketing practices in international agricultural markets, debt problems in heretofore rapidly developing third-world countries that had been among our fastest growing export markets, and uncompetitive practices spawned by the foreign trade policies of our major competitors in international agricultural markets.