Word: cropped
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...price jump came sooner than economists had predicted, primarily because some food-processing companies raised their prices before they started paying more for their raw materials. But many producers have not yet hiked their prices; when they do, further retail increases are likely. The devastation of the durum-wheat crop in North Dakota, for example, is bound to result in heavy markups on pasta. The Agriculture Department maintains that the inflation rate for food this year will stay within its predicted range of 3% to 5%, but that forecast is looking increasingly wishful...
...shelter in forest undergrowth. These creatures eat and distribute mycorrhizal fungi, which grow among the rootlets of saplings and help the trees absorb water and nutrients. There may be enough spores of fungi in the soil after a clear-cut to start a second-growth forest, but a third crop is less likely to be successful, and it now seems possible that sustained-yield forests based on clear-cutting simply may not work...
...only ones praying for rain. The drought has also meant big trouble for Chubb, the 16th largest U.S. property and casualty insurer (assets: $9.2 billion). Reason: the Warren, N.J., company inadvertently plunged too deep into the rain-insurance business. Chubb's policies, designed to reimburse farmers for crop damage due to low rainfall, sold faster than roadside lemonade in ten Midwestern and Southern states last June, before the full impact of the drought was apparent. By the June 15 application deadline, Chubb's independent managing agent, Good Weather International of Jericho, N.Y., had received more than 8,700 applications...
Even so, many farmers would rather not have to hold Chubb to its word. Says Iowa Plaintiff Lewis Schoening, 52, who farms 1,200 acres and expects to lose two-thirds of his corn crop and almost half his soybeans if the dry weather continues: "I'd sure rather have the rain than the insurance...
...disheartening as the federal crop estimates are, they may prove too optimistic, says Conrad Leslie, a private crop forecaster. He puts the corn crop at less than 4 billion bu. and soybeans at 1.4 billion bu. Says he: "This is the worst drought of the century...