Word: drought
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...part of the inflationary wave that swept through the U.S. over the past three years hit consumers harder than spiraling prices at the supermarket. From 1972 to the end of last year, the cost of food jumped 42%, reflecting the price-boosting pressures of the big Soviet grain sales, drought, destructively heavy rains and lively speculation on commodity exchanges. Now the price wave seems to be subsiding. During the past six months, food prices rose by only 1.1%, and Agriculture Department economists forecast an increase of no more than 3% for the rest of 1976, compared with 8.5% last year...
What could upset the relatively pleasing picture? A weather disaster affecting this year's corn, wheat or soybean crops could do it, but the impact would not be noticeable on market shelves until 1977. Although many farmers from Iowa to Texas are worried about a drought, and there has been some damage to the winter wheat crop, grain prices have so far been only slightly affected. The outlook is for continued calm, with the main beneficiaries-in this election year-being the millions of middle-and lower-income families that spend more of their available cash on food than...
Some experts attribute the lack of rain to an absence of sunspots, others to recurring drought cycles. In any event, parts of the Great Plains have received so little rain that they are actually drier than at the onset of the great drought of '34. Starved for moisture, the rich topsoil in hard-hit areas of the Great Plains is turning into a fine brown silt. Winds hurl the dust particles against the still-growing sprouts, until they lose their color...
Fresh Sprouts. Much of California was drenched by rain last week, but after almost six months of unrelieved drought, the downpours were too late to be of much help to farmers. As Gordon Snow, an official in the state Department of Food and Agriculture, put it: "It is going to have to rain for 40 days and 40 nights to make any difference." Because of the lack of rain, California's usually green fields are burned brown. Wildlife, starved for fresh sprouts, is migrating to the few irrigated areas. Fruits and vegetables have been withering for lack of moisture...
...first, farm experts and weather forecasters had feared that the present drought might be only the start of a cycle. In 1933, the parched earth spread northward from Kansas and Oklahoma until by 1935 most of the Middle West was afflicted. Mercifully, an onset of rain in Iowa and other parts of the Midwest has alleviated that worry. Still, in areas already seriously stricken by drought, it will take several years of normal rainfall and intensive soil husbandry before Dust Bowl conditions are overcome...