Word: corns
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...hosts surely needed the cheering up. America's 2.4 million farmers are struggling to survive the worst slump since the Depression, caught in a vise of rising costs and falling prices. Though they are expected to chalk up near record crops of wheat (73.8 million metric tons) and corn (208 million metric tons) this year, the silo-busting harvests will only push low prices even lower. Since 1975, as farm expenses have nearly doubled (from $75.9 billion to $141.5 billion), net farm income has fallen. Profits, which declined from $32.7 billion in 1979 to $22.9 billion last year...
...still be the case despite the White House announcement, three days before the Iowa visit, that the President was extending for one year the grain supply agreement with the Soviet Union that is due to expire this September. Speaking last week to some 5,000 members of the National Corn Growers Association and their guests in Des Moines, assembled in the half-filled Veterans Memorial Auditorium, Reagan proclaimed: "The granary door is open, and the exchange will be cash on the barrelhead...
...long-term pact with Moscow that would guarantee sales over several years and assure them of a buyer for their bulging surpluses. Reagan's decision clearly left most of them disappointed. The extension permits the Soviet Union to buy a minimum of 6 million tons of corn and wheat, but requires further consultation between Washington and Moscow for a deal of more than 8 million tons. Farmers believe that the U.S. could easily sell Moscow as much as 23 million tons over the next year. The U.S.S.R. has just suffered its fourth bad harvest...
...farmers are hurting equally. Grain farmers are in the worst shape: corn producers are even worse off than wheat growers because there is less demand abroad for their crop. Those who raise hogs and cattle are doing relatively better, thanks to climbing meat prices and, ironically for grain growers, the low cost of feed. Dairymen, who make up only 13% of all farmers, are faring best of all, since Washington buys up nearly all of their surplus products; last year the Federal Government paid out more than $2 billion in dairy price supports...
...patches have been spotted everywhere by overworked law-enforcement officials: between rows of corn on Iowa farms, in narrow strips along streambeds in the Ozarks, in cleared plots on timberland owned by giant companies, even on public lands. Says Ernie Anderson, the Forest Service's director of law enforcement: "We've had reports of marijuana cultivation on practically every one of the 154 national forests and grasslands...