agrarian scissors

Primarily a calque of Hungarian agrárolló. See price scissors, scissors crisis.

agrarian scissors pl (plural only)

1. (chiefly Hungary) The disparity between the prices of agricultural and industrial products.
   • 1938, Oscar Jászi, “Feudal Agrarianism in Hungary”, in Foreign Affairs‎, volume 16:

     For a time it looked as if even ideological protests against the ruling system had been discredited. But the traditional wounds of the country were still there, and they soon began to bleed again, partly because of the stopping of emigration to America, partly because of the “agrarian scissors” which put the living standard of the people on a starvation level.

   • 1956, Carlile Aylmer Macartney, October Fifteenth: A History of Modern Hungary, 1929–1945, volume 1, page 118:

     The price of wheat was down now to 7.76 gold francs per quintal, opening the “agrarian scissors” to the extraordinary angle of 70.4 per cent. […]

   • 1998, Nicholas Nagy-Talavera, Nicolae Iorga: A Biography, page 356:

     The agrarian scissors were set at an angle of 59.4% as late as 1940, and the living standard was 33% to 64% lower than it had been in 1916.

• price scissors