Word: frosts
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FARMERS. Though the country's 1.5 million farmers are generally conservative and Republican, Ford is now about as popular as an early frost among many of them. They and their families make up less than 5% of the U.S. voting-age population, but their views are often shared by millions of other voters who depend on the farmers economically, such as people employed by farm suppliers and food processors. Four years ago, farmers gave Richard Nixon 71% of their votes. But farmers usually vote for the incumbent party only when farm prices are high. Lately, prices have been running...
...Frost-Struck. To be sure, the increases are not yet anywhere near as dizzying as those of 1973, when some prices quadrupled. But there is cause for concern. One closely watched index of prices of 13 industrial raw materials, published weekly by the Economist of London (and calculated in dollars), has risen 34% since last November. Quotations on the London commodity markets, which determine prices for many international transactions, are somewhat overstated since they are expressed in sterling and the pound has been sinking sharply in value. Even so, they are worrisome. Some examples: the sterling price of copper wire...
...coffee. Contracts for future purchases of coffee beans have recently been selling at an astonishing 304% higher than the 1975 lows; in some New York stores the retail price of coffee has hit $2.29 per lb., up from $1.79 a year ago. The principal cause is a crippling frost that in July 1975 killed or severely damaged an estimated 70% of Brazil's coffee trees. The frost struck after most of the 1975 crop had been harvested, so it did not cut exports immediately, but now the impact of the shortage has hit. It will continue to be felt...
...female planter, however, is Mrs. Eliza Lucas Pinckney, 53, also of South Carolina. When only a girl, managing her absent father's large plantation with what one friend called "a fertile brain for scheming," Eliza decided to start cultivating West Indian indigo. At first she suffered setbacks from frost and insect blight, but within seven years, she was able to produce an indigo dye of sufficient quality to export to England. Thanks to Eliza's pioneering, indigo was one of the southern colonies' greatest exports last year. South Carolina alone produced a crop worth about...
...Saharan Africa have not yet recovered from a recent six-year period of little or no rain. Rice shortages hit Asia in 1974, while the vital monsoon rains came late to India. In 1974, after a bumper 1973 crop, excessive rain in the spring, summer drought and early frost caused a decline in the U.S. wheat crop...