Word: drought
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...many farmers, John Steinbeck's description of the Dust Bowl is as tragically apt today as it was in the 1930s. The drought and winds that four decades ago turned large parts of the U.S. into an agricultural disaster area have returned to some areas of the Great Plains, parching crops and whipping topsoil into sun-darkening clouds. In the 1930s the victims of the drought-the impoverished Okies memorialized in Steinbeck's novel-were lured westward by California's verdant fruit groves. But this time California is suffering from its most severe drought since...
...most notable troubles are in agriculture. Drought contributed to a disastrous harvest in 1975; because of an 83-million-ton grain shortage, the Soviets were obliged to buy 35 million tons from the U.S. and other foreign countries. The winter-wheat crop this year has already proved disappointing. Some Washington experts predict that shortages of bread and especially meat and dairy products will become so acute by next spring that strikes and even riots could break out. These disorders are most likely to occur in provincial towns, but not in Moscow and other big cities that hold high priorities...
...years ago. The biggest and longest-lived of the five rivers, the Paleonile probably rose in the western Sudan after a prolonged rainy period, filling the Nile Valley with silt that eventually pushed the Mediterranean back out of Egypt. Then, around 1.8 million years ago, a 1-million-year drought dried up the Paleonile, gave birth to the Sahara and turned much of Egypt into a desert that Said says must have resembled the arid "Empty Quarter" of Saudi Arabia...
...China has given $1.8 billion, and the World Bank has provided $1 billion. But the Soviets have been highly selective in their grants to ensure maximum impact. Somalia, for example, has received only $60 million from Moscow in the past year, but it came at a crucial moment. When drought and famine hit the country in late 1974, the Soviets stepped in quickly and efficiently; within a few weeks they had airlifted 120,000 starving nomads from the parched interior to camps near the coast and provided experts to retrain them as fishermen and farmers. In other states, such...
Denny and Jeanne Grindall, Presbyterians from Seattle, where Denny is a florist and nurseryman, found their call in their 50s on a 1968 vacation in Africa. Visiting some Masai nomads in Kenya, they were appalled at the disease, drought and hunger. "We knew what we had to do," says Denny Grindall. "God led us to this place." He studied up on engineering and put his new learning to work (along with quiet infusions of the family savings) in a succession of six-month stays in Kenya. The Grindalls have won the respect and affection of the Masai and changed their...