Word: corns
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...idle chitchat, especially these days. In a parched field west of Twain's home town of Hannibal, a Missouri farmer was, of course, talking about the weather. The seven-week-long drought, after all, has desiccated as much as half the crops in the Midwest and South. "My corn was ruined by July 20," says Paul Wilson of Shelbyville. "There were too many days over 100° while the corn was trying to pollinate." Wilson's corn crop, mostly stunted if not destroyed, will probably be 20% of last fall's. The countryside is denuded. Says Farmer...
...Oklahoma, Kansas and Nebraska since the beginning of July. Any rain, however, was likely to be too late to save much of the harvest in the Midwest. In Dewitt County, Ill., Lester Thorpe went out into his fields of brown stalks and plowed under his 1,100 acres of corn last week. "There's not enough here for seed or to cover the cost of harvesting," he said with a sigh. "Best just to dig it up and forget...
Agriculture Secretary John Block is considering declaring certain areas in the Midwest "agriculture disaster areas," which would free up emergency federal funds. Block had a chance to see the situation for himself this past weekend when he visited his own corn and soybean farm in northwestern Illinois. Says Jim Swise, who helps run Block's farm: "Some of this corn is brown all the way up to the tassel. Corn just doesn't pollinate when it's 100°. Some of it didn't even put out an ear shoot...
...billion bu. of corn that are expected to be lost to the drought are in addition to the 2.2 billion bu. not planted as part of the Government's payment-in-kind (PIK) program, which provides subsidies to farmers for keeping their fields fallow. Analysts estimate that the corn yield will be down by 25%, or $4.5 billion worth. In the short term this may mean lower prices for meat as ranchers rush their herds to slaughter rather than continuing to fatten them. But in the long run it could mean significantly higher prices for both meat and grain...
Sustained rains so desperately needed in the corn belt were causing havoc in the deserts of Southern California, Nevada and Arizona. Nine Italian tourists and their pilot were killed when a small plane crashed in a thunderstorm near the Grand Canyon. Four other people were killed in accidents related to the freak August cloudbursts in the Southwest. Among them were two motorists who were caught in flash floods that swept through San Bernardino, 65 miles east of Los Angeles. Four inches of rain fell in four hours in the desert area...