Word: cropped
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...were nearly 7,000 farm failures. Even many secure and usually prosperous farmers are feeling the pinch. "You've heard farmers bitching all your life," says Chappel Sides, 53, a cotton, soybean and peanut farmer near Coffeeville, Miss. "But when an above-average farmer makes an above-average crop and loses a pile of money, you know something's wrong. We're just right on the verge of a sure-enough tragedy...
...comes closest to blaming the Farmers Home Administration (FmHA), the Government lender of last resort. Last spring Fulton asked for $240,000 both to pay off his 1981 debt-his crop had been stunted by a late rain, then sold at desperately low prices-and to cover 1982 planting costs. The local FmHA offered him $55,000. "Farmers Home didn't tell us to get out of business," says his wife Sharon. "They just made it impossible for us to stay...
Other farmers face much more risk, but they too can avoid flat-out failure by falling into Government safety nets. Steffen, for instance, took out a $19,500 federal loan last spring, using his corn crop as collateral. Back then the collateral was appraised by Washington at $3.15 per bu.; today Steffen's local grain elevator is paying just $1.99 for corn. Steffen may default on the loan, effectively selling his corn to the U.S. Government for a dollar more than anyone else would pay for it. Tens of thousands of farmers are expected to do the same this...
...year, Northrup pressured his borrowers to sign up for the Government's unpaid land "set-aside" program. To reduce production and raise prices, 10% of each farmer's corn acreage was to be retired during 1982. Only a quarter of U.S. farmers participated; the effect on the crop was negligible...
...irreverence. It should be clear by now, and from comparison with his legion of imitators and disciples, that he is unique-no longer, perhaps, in what he does, but for how well and how consistently he does it. When the Midwest brought forth Johnny Carson, it produced a bumper crop...