Word: cropped
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...begun discussing with U.S companies the exploitation of its offshore oil. The Vietnamese need for normal diplomatic ties with the U.S. became acute when four tropical storms hit in one week, flooding the Mekong Delta rice fields. The floods destroyed as much as 80 per cent of the rice crop, and Vietnam now needs the American trade embargo lifted to gain access to U.S. agricultural products. While the chronic Third World ailments are forcing Vietnam to push for closer ties with the United States the Carter administration, by not responding to Vietnamese gestures, is sacrificing any ability to realize...
...forced into financing decisions as intricate as those facing corporate treasurers. Borrowing money at interest rates of up to 12% to buy or rent additional land and invest in machinery can improve a farm's productivity and profits?or it can ruin a farmer who expands too fast while crop prices are falling, as many growers did in 1976-77. Indeed, the angry protests last fall and winter came largely from younger, undercapitalized farmers who borrowed and bought too much too soon and were badly squeezed by inflation...
...result: instead of selling all their crops at harvest time, as they did for centuries (indeed, millenniums), farmers now spread sales all through the year. That forces them to face tricky questions: Will wheat or corn or soybean prices be higher next March than now, and if so will they be enough higher to justify storing 80% of the crop until then, or only 60% of it? To complicate matters further, a farmer can work out deals to sell part of his crop in October, say, but get the cash next January if that would be better for tax purposes...
...past five years Pat has been expanding, and trying to beat the wild fluctuations in crop prices, in another way: bringing to the farm lands the concept known in industry as vertical integration. Like other growers, he resented having to take his beets for milling to the nearby American Crystal Sugar Co. plant. One reason: the company's officers, then based in Denver, insisted on shutting down the mills on weekends, even during harvest time when beets must be ground up quickly before they rot. Recalls Pat: "We were at the mercy of people a thousand miles away who just...
...Sullivan and his cameras saw a cash crop of bop sweating teenagers making all kinds of marketable noises. The money people record the noises and sell them back to their creators...