Word: croppings
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...third of what it was last year. The peanut plants, normally large and verdant, the size of trash-can tops with diminutive yellow flowers nestled in their leaves, are Frisbee size, no more than 12 in. wide, and wilting. As for Dawson's usually rich crop of corn, folk wisdom has it that the stalks should be "as high as an elephant's eye by the Fourth of July," but now they are only three or four feet tall and not likely to grow much higher. Says Bobby Locke, head of the agricultural commission of the Dawson Chamber...
Dawson's plight is common to the Southeastern U.S. From central Florida to Atlanta to eastern Mississippi, the drought has already doomed such staples as hay and corn, normally harvested this month. The soybean, cotton and peanut crops are all endangered. Parts of the region are suffering their worst water shortage in nearly a quarter of a century. With most of the Far West and large stretches of the Midwest also in the throes of a prolonged dry spell (see map), the acting director of the Department of Agriculture's crop weather reporting service, Lyle Benny, cites...
...much of the Southeast, though, the damage has already been done. With 130 of Georgia's 159 counties declared disaster areas. 40% of the soybean crop in the state has been destroyed, costing farmers nearly $60 million. Damage to Georgia's corn crop has reached $162 million, and hay and pastureland losses total another $102 million. In Alabama, officials say three-quarters of the corn crop is gone, and certain counties in the Florida panhandle report the destruction of 95% of their corn and hay. The drought has proved a boon for bugs: without rain, insecticides fail...
...easygoing Laotians were shocked by the imposition of a six-day work week, capped by mandatory political indoctrination on Sundays. Small family farm plots were merged into large communes. Peasants, who never before had paid taxes, suddenly found themselves forced to turn over 8% to 30% of their rice crop to state warehouses. A census was taken of barnyard stocks, and peasants were warned that they could not eat any chicken-even those dying of natural causes-without permission from a local Communist cadre...
...about two years coffee drinkers have bitterly watched prices jump from $1.46 a Ib. to more than $4. A crop-killing frost in Brazil in 1975 touched off frantic bidding by buyers who feared a shortage; several coffee-producing countries aggravated the rise by increasing export taxes on the beans. Now the U.S. Department of Agriculture forecasts that Brazil, which normally grows about a third of the world's supply, will harvest about 17 million bags of beans in the crop year that begins Oct. 1-not far from double the 1976-77 crop of 9.5 million bags...