Word: farmerly
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...times are particularly hard on the small farmer. Caught in a credit squeeze, he is usually the first to go bankrupt or give up (see box). Since 1970, farm debt has doubled to $101 billion. An Agriculture Department survey of the wheat belt last summer showed that 73,000 farmers were having trouble repaying loans, with some 14,000 of them likely to lose their farms. Edward H. Melroe, a Colorado grain farmer, reports: "I went to the bank last week for another $10,000 loan, and the banker told me: 'That's it. No more...
...Farmers do not agree. They argue that the extra subsidies will still not fulfill Jimmy Carter's campaign pledge to cover their production costs. So far, American Agriculture, operating out of a small one-story building in Springfield, has spent a modest $20,000, raised from farmers' donations, to print leaflets, make telephone calls and send out proselytizers. "You can't believe the response," says Dan Yokum, a Colorado farmer who helps man the phones in the organization's headquarters. Argues Bud Bitner: "This thing is cooking all over...
Despite these varied and growing efforts, can the farmers (and their wives) really pull off a nationwide strike? Similar efforts in the past have foundered on the farmers' craggy individualism. Already, 80% of the winter wheat has been planted-a sign that farmers are not exactly slowing down. Says Farmer Harold Klein, who is active in the North Dakota wheat pool, an organization set up to eliminate the middleman in handling exports: "The farmers talk about strikes but go ahead and plant anyway, hoping that their neighbors will do the striking...
...Yokum goes broke, he says he will follow countless other farmers and go to a big city to look for a job. "Of course, I'd rather not do it. I really hope to continue farming." He cannot help wondering, however, whether he will be able to avoid the fate of his brother, a Texas farmer who went bankrupt last year...
After last winter's giant wallop, what is in store this year? Official U.S. long-range-weather forecasters are hedging their bets, but others are not. The 1978 edition of the Old Farmer's Almanac, out last week, predicts that the Northeast is in for a particularly "cold and gloomy" winter. Snowfall will be 15 to 20 in. above average. The chill will descend as far south as Florida. A moderate winter is predicted for the rest of the country-but folkloric weathermen in the Midwest cite a number of telltale signs that point in the opposite direction...