Word: corns
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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They are like a scattered army-you can't shoot them all." So said Farmer Ivan Josserand of Stanton County in western Kansas last week, as he fought a losing battle against swarms of grasshoppers chewing up his alfalfa and corn fields. In Nebraska, Scotts Bluff County Agent Monte Hendricks counted up to 50 hoppers per sq. yd., five times the number usually considered to be disastrous. Said he: "On the fringes of some bean fields there is nothing left but stubs...
They laughed when Indiana Senator Richard Lugar suggested during last winter's coal strike that Americans take a lesson from Depression farmers and burn corn on the cob. But not everyone rejected his idea as farfetched. For the past two months, the Logansport, Ind., Municipal Utilities Group has been producing electricity by burning a mixture of 80% coal and 20% shelled, dried seed corn...
Though an earlier, similar experiment by an Iowa utility ended abruptly when worries arose over the burning of a corn fungicide, LMU has not met any environmentalist opposition. The corn "burns cleanly and has no detectable emissions," says Edwin McDivitt, 49, manager of utilities for LMU and the driving force behind the idea. He adds: "It would be nice to say that we did it for environmental reasons, but I got into it to save a buck...
...economies from burning the surplus grain, which is too old to be planted and is good only for fertilizer or landfill, can be large. LMU paid $11 a ton for its initial order of 650 tons of corn, and got an average heat output of 14 million BTUS per ton. Coal, by comparison, costs on the average $24 a ton and gives off no more than 23 million BTUs. The math works out to a 23% saving when corn is used...
...from affecting bankerly reserve, Miller roars with laughter at his own often corn-pone jokes, some directed at the august but arcane institution that he heads. He has invented a mythical poll in which 23% of the U.S. population thought the Federal Reserve was an Indian reservation, 26% judged it to be a wildlife preserve and 51% identified it as a brand of whisky. Most important, he speaks almost garrulously in tones of unabashed can-do optimism. The nation, he insists, can bring down its frightening rate of inflation without suffering another recession?indeed, while working toward a "model economy...