Word: cropped
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Midwestern farmers ordinarily welcome summer rains because they hasten the ripening of lucrative crops. This season's rainfall has been unusually heavy, accompanied by high humidity and winds from the hurricane-laden skies of the South. Last week farmers discovered to their dismay that the combination threatened calamity to the cornbelt states of Illinois, Indiana and Iowa, endangering the nation's biggest cash crop...
...rapid spread of the blight caught the Government by surprise, partly because federal crop checkers found it hard to detect: healthy-looking stalks and leaves often concealed young ears that were rotting. As late as Aug. 4, federal crop forecasters were predicting a 1970 crop of 4.7 billion bushels, up 3% from last year. Last week Agriculture Department experts unofficially lowered that estimate by 10%, but plant pathologists elsewhere fear that the crop loss may run higher. Preliminary field reports indicated that 30% to 40% losses are likely in the Southeast, and that the yield in Illinois...
...week began, alarming early estimates that half the U.S. corn crop might be wiped out fired a frantic trading rush on the Chicago Board of Trade, the nation's largest commodity market. A 122-year-old record fell when 193 million bushels of corn changed hands in one day. Corn futures jumped their 80-per-bushel daily limit, and so did the price of wheat, oats and soybeans. Though the trading frenzy subsided along with prices at week's end, the blight lifted the price of May corn futures by 240 per bushel last week, to $1.63. Wholesalers...
...slow-motion rhythms of Arctic life, a crop of simple lichen may take 100 years to grow to maturity?a few inches high. Arctic char, a staple Eskimo food, keeps on growing for 18 years. Migratory birds?lesser Canada geese, eider ducks, American pintails, whistling swans, Brant geese?must time their breeding to the day. If winter is unusually long, a whole species may achieve zero population growth because it lacks time to hatch and rear its young before the ice begins to return in late August...
What used to trouble Hollywood about Altman was that he turned the totalitarian trade of film directing into democracy, if not anarchy. Far from strutting around on the set with a riding crop, Altman is likely to operate the clapstick himself and encourage suggestions from second assistants and electricians. An Altman film is more like an improvisational encounter group than a showcase for stars and plot. Sally Kellerman, who played Nurse Hot Lips Houlihan in M*A*S*H, reports that "even my analyst said it did more for me than a man could." Working for Altman, says Sally...