Word: croppings
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Harvard and one Radcliffe junior are among a group of about 600 Americans who will help the Cubans harvest their sugar crop...
...first detachment of 216 Americans have been in Cuba since early December. Both groups are part of the International Veneceremous Brigade which is helping the Cubans harvest what they hope will be a record ten million ton sugar crop...
...that cross political boundaries. At the federal level, the maze of agencies with conflicting environmental responsibilities must be reordered. While the Agriculture Department pays farmers to drain wetlands, for example, the Interior Department pays to preserve them. Worse, the farm-subsidy program encourages the misuse of toxic chemicals, one-crop farming that destroys ecological diversity, and mechanization that drives jobless rural laborers into packed cities. Federal highway builders, the Army Corps of Engineers?all such official land abusers?need retraining in ecological values...
FERTILIZERS. To boost crop production, nitrogen fertilizers are spread liberally on California's superb farm lands. Just as people get hooked on drugs, so the soil seems to become addicted to chemical additives and loses its ability to fix its own nitrogen. As a result, more and more fertilizer has to be used. What makes the problem doubly serious is that the nitrates eventually turn up in the water supply, where they endanger human health...
...extremely difficult and expensive. To wean farmers away from pesticides and chemical fertilizers, for example, would cause at least a temporary decline in farm productivity and a hike in food prices. Fortunately, ecologists are developing reasonable replacements; there is nothing wrong with organic fertilizers or the prechemical method of crop rotation. Much is also being learned about the biological control of pests. To kill the leaf hopper Dikrella, which destroys grapes and is now immune to DDT, California ecologists have employed a tiny wasp?and the cost of controlling leaf hoppers has declined by 87% since the wasp buzzed into...