Word: drought
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...good. Since June, Anderberg has sold nearly 5,000 head of cattle per week to packers, feed-lot owners and out-of-state cattlemen, almost five times the average during a normal summer. But business is not normal anywhere in South Dakota this summer. Parched by the worst drought in 42 years, the prairies are yellow and burnt, and at least half of the state's oats, wheat and barley cash crops have been devastated. In all, the drought could cost the state $1 billion, or half of its annual agricultural output. Since April, less than four inches...
Small Help. Primarily through the Federal Disaster Assistance Administration, South Dakota farmers and ranchers stand to receive about $3 million in hay and transportation subsidies. But federal funds can do little to offset the deeper impact of the drought. According to the University of South Dakota's Business Research Bureau, the cash-crop losses could wipe out 47,500 jobs during the next year, as farms and related businesses lose sales or cut back services. If that happens, the state's unemployment rate could jump from 4.7% now to nearly 20%. Local schools may suffer, since they rely...
Still, dispirited ranchers continue bringing their cattle to auction each week. As Ron Nelson, a cattleman up from Iowa to look over the South Dakota stock, observed recently in Miller, "If this were the first year of the drought, a lot of these boys would take a loan, buy some hay and hold on. But it's been too bad, too long...
...good rainfall will not be enough to rescue Britain. In fact, even if it rained constantly for the rest of the summer, the country would still have to maintain conservation measures. Although some regions (Scotland, North Wales, sections of Yorkshire) are suffering no drought at all, other regions, including the Thames area and southwest England, are so parched that meteorologists say a full 18 months of above-average rainfall are needed to restore water-supply levels to normal...
...only pleasant thing to surface from Britain's drought: in a Welsh valley that had been turned into a reservoir years ago, the stone cottage where Percy Bysshe Shelley romped with his young bride Harriet Westbrook and wrote his first great poetry was exposed to view again as the waters dropped...