Word: billioned
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Currently China's people are being exhorted by song ("Manure Sources Are Plentiful") and slogan ("Make manure by soaking and smoking") to accumulate 10 billion tons of fertilizer. But so many Chinese are tied up on other "shock programs" that despite China's 600 million-man labor force there is a shortage of manure collectors; to find hands for the task, Hopei province has been obliged to abandon eight out of twelve high-priority irrigation projects planned for this year...
...farmers more than trebled their ownership of tractors, to 4,700,000 (an average1½ per commercial farm). Since 1945, they have increased their number of newer work-saving machinery by 1,200%-mostly with machines that had not even been invented in 1938. Farmers have invested $17.5 billion in 1,040,000 combines, 745,000 cornpickers, 590,000 pickup hay balers, 255,000 field forage harvesters and other machinery. They spend $1.5 billion for gasoline and oil each year just to keep the equipment going...
...soil bank, the planted acreage was reduced to the smallest since 1919. But the yield was 11% greater than in the previous record year of 1957. This year, in many crops, the U.S. is headed for even bigger surpluses. The 1959 wheat harvest was forecast last week at 1.2 billion bu. This will add 200 million bu. to the record 1.3 billion bu. wheat carryover expected this July1. With productivity shooting up like the kudzu vine, even veteran farm lobbyists are beginning to wonder if any kind of a subsidized farm program can be anything but a failure and scandal...
Last year U.S. farmers seeded 90% of their corn acreage with hybrid corn, got a total yield of 3.4 billion bu.-750 million bu. higher than they could have produced with regular corn. The wonders of hybrid corn are still surprising the scientists. For example, last year Illinois Farmer James Holderman decided to try a new type of hybrid corn, even though the experts warned him it was not suitable for his land. He doubled the amount of fertilizer, planted the rows closer together, and his yield jumped to 175 bu. an acre, compared to an average...
...Henry Saglio, 47, who raises 15 million hens at Arbor Acres, his farm near Glastonbury, Conn. They sell the chickens to the hatchery men, who use them to breed the chicks, which in turn are sold to the broiler men to raise for the market. Of the nearly 2 billion chickens that are turned out for eating every year, Vantress' roosters sire 75%; Saglio's hens mother about 50% of the total...