Word: corns
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...farmer's good fortune may result from another's pinch. An agricultural-loan specialist for California's Bank of America asserts: "You'd have to be pretty incompetent not to make money in cattle this year." Reason: a combination of high prices for meat and relatively low costs for corn and other feeds that has corn growers grumbling. Vegetable growers in central Florida are selling big crops of lettuce at prices that have been pushed abnormally high by the winter-spring rains that made California lettuce scarce and unappetizing...
...world?has more than doubled the price of U.S. farm land since 1972, to an average $490 an acre last February; prime Midwestern corn and soybean land sells for $2,000 an acre. A tractor that sold for $16,000 in 1974 may cost almost twice as much now; it would have a few new features, but be no more powerful. The result is that farmers have been forced into financing decisions as intricate as those facing corporate treasurers. Borrowing money at interest rates of up to 12% to buy or rent additional land and invest in machinery can improve...
...result: instead of selling all their crops at harvest time, as they did for centuries (indeed, millenniums), farmers now spread sales all through the year. That forces them to face tricky questions: Will wheat or corn or soybean prices be higher next March than now, and if so will they be enough higher to justify storing 80% of the crop until then, or only 60% of it? To complicate matters further, a farmer can work out deals to sell part of his crop in October, say, but get the cash next January if that would be better for tax purposes...
Enough food is left over to make the export capacity of American agriculture the hope of the have-not world. Farm-product exports tripled in the past six years to almost $27 billion, helping mightily to offset the cost of imports. The U.S. exports more wheat, corn and other coarse grains (barley, oats, sorghum) than all the rest of the world combined. Pat Benedict and farmers like him are America's best hope to counter the trade challenge presented by the oilmen of Araby and the energetic manufacturers of Japan. U.S. food exports would be higher still were...
...dissent to the "get big or get out" philosophy comes from, of all people, David Garst, 52, the ruler of a family agribusiness empire big enough to make him a prairie Rockefeller. Based in Coon Rapids, Iowa, the business includes 8,000 acres on which the Garsts raise seed corn and breeding cattle, as well as a grain-elevator and storage operation, machinery manufacturing, the preparation and sale of agricultural chemicals, five banks and an insurance company. The Garst assets, which are divided among David, one brother, three sisters and their children, probably total more than $50 million...