Word: aridity
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...people, the politicians unwisely did what they could for themselves. Dahomey's first President built a $3,000,000 palace; the Upper Volta's Yaméogo built himself a sumtuous country retreat with a swimming pool, while farmers still desperately seek water holes on the arid plains to keep their cattle from thirsting to death...
Largely because so much of Latin America is mountainous, arid or tropical, less than 5% (v. 16% in the U.S.) of its more than 7,700,000 sq. mi. of land is under cultivation. Experts also cite antique farming methods. In Venezuela, primitive farms produce an average of two bushels of corn per acre, compared with 67 bushels on modern U.S. farms. Traditionally, holders of large estates do not cultivate more than necessary to earn an income suitable to their social status. But, as Bolivia and Mexico have discovered, land-reform programs that carve up productive estates into family-sized...
...shadow of a hanged man last week lay across the arid Anatolian plateau. It was that of Adnan Menderes, who was overthrown as Turkey's Premier in 1960, tried by the state, and sentenced to death. Menderes' peasant-based Democratic Party was banned, and the triumphant Republicans of wizened old Ismet Inönü took over. But Menderes' popularity, it seems, has only ripened with time. Barely a fortnight before the nation's general elections, his unofficial successor, Suleyman Demirel, 41, stands a chance of winning the lion's share...
...retrench and dig in and start to go again." Whereupon the Giants went out and lost their third game in a row, 8-2, to the Milwaukee Braves - while the Dodgers were winning their seventh straight over St. Louis, 4-3. Next day, Willie Mays crashed his 50th homer, arid the Giants finally snapped out of their losing streak with a 7-5 victory over the Braves. It was a good thing they did. In Los Angeles, Dodger Pitcher Sandy Koufax shut out the Cardinals 2-0 and recorded his 356th strikeout of the season, breaking Bob Feller...
...until the turn-of-the-century Administration of outdoor-loving Teddy Roosevelt that the country got into preservation in a big way. Influenced early in life by Muir and later by Gifford Pinchot, McKinley's chief forester, Roosevelt began by pressing for water conservation in the arid West. He won the power to establish the nation's natural and historical treasures as national monuments, then ingeniously outflanked an attempt to wipe out many of the nation's national forests. Faced with a forest-eliminating rider to a bill for much-needed funds, Teddy responded with wilderness-bred...