Word: farmland
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...certain public facilities. If they build pedestrian walkways or include an entrance to Washington, D.C.'s subway system as part of their buildings, they are permitted to increase floor space or add extra stories to new structures. The county has also set up a novel way to protect farmland from suburbanization. Farmers can sell "rural development rights" for their property to builders, who can then use those rights in such urban areas as Bethesda and Silver Spring. The farmer gets paid, his land is protected from builders, since the development rights have already been sold, and the construction firm...
Last month the San Joaquin River, flush with mountain runoff, broke through a levee near Vernalis in Northern California and washed out 10 sq. mi. of prime farmland. Farther upstream, in central California's Kings County, rains had already dunked 70,000 acres in floodwater; the runoff now threatens an additional 20,000 acres. "We're down here like a bathtub without a drain," fretted Farmer Don Gilkey, who had 4,000 of his 10,000 acres drowned...
...program will cause the greatest idling of American farmland ever. Up to 82.3 million acres, or 20% of all U.S. cropland, will be left unsowed. With some $5 billion less being spent to produce crops this year, as many as 50,000 workers in the farm sector, from cotton ginners to wheat cutters, could be hurt, according to a U.S. Department of Agriculture impact statement...
...Illinois, death row is up on a bluff in a sandstone prison opened in 1878. The 49 current inmates have a 19th century landscape artist's view-the Mississippi River and miles of rich farmland beyond-except for the bars and razor wire. Menard Correctional Center (pop. 2,600) is the principal industry of Chester, Ill. (pop. 8,000). The inmates, two of whom are scheduled to be electrocuted this spring, are alone in their cells for at least 21 hours a day. When they are in transit, once a day to the law library and once...
...financial markets. Real estate prices failed to keep pace with the Consumer Price Index, which was only 4.6% higher in November than a year earlier. The median price of a single-family house went up less than 4%, from $65,900 to $68,200. An acre of Iowa farmland, reflecting the slump in agriculture, dropped from $2,147 to $1,801. Explained Robert Jolly, an Iowa State University assistant professor of economics: "The major buyers out there are other farmers." And many of them had trouble holding on to their own farms last year...