Word: grains
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Last year, points out Brown, the U.S. became a "food deficit" nation, producing 196 million tons of grain and consuming 206 million. The 100 or so nations that purchase food from us are being supplied out of our dwindling reserves, now down to one-third of our stocks of just two years ago. The world's carry-over supplies have been reduced from 101 days of food consumption to 54 days, which is just about enough to keep the global food pipeline filled. "If the drought goes on," says Brown, "we could see a frantic scramble for supplies that would...
Historians have long considered the 1908 livestock feeding barn of the Manchester family in New Hampshire, Ohio, to be one of the finest examples of a round barn in the Midwest. That was nice, but until recently, the barn was nearly useless for modern grain farming. Like most old barns, it contained stalls for livestock and horses -- the preindustrial tractors of agriculture -- and a cavernous hayloft for storing their fuel. Over time, the outmoded barn weathered and withered. But during the past 15 years, to avoid new construction costs, the Manchesters have braced the old roof, installed modern seed-conditioning...
...They are worrying about day-to-day survival. The winter has been unusually harsh. With the exception of the Salang Highway, roads into the city are cut, resulting in shortages of bread, diesel fuel, sugar, kerosene and other basics; electricity is available only part of the time. The Kabul grain silo, which usually holds a stock of 20,000 tons, has been empty at several points in the past few weeks. The poor are especially vulnerable because they cannot afford to shop at relatively well-stocked black-market outlets where bread is sold for more than a dollar a loaf...
...other indicators, mostly of the Soviet domestic variety, stock in Gorby Inc. is in a tailspin. Most devastating was the news last week that the 1988 Soviet grain harvest ranked as the worst in three years. Despite desperate efforts to reform agriculture, the harvest came in 16 million tons below the previous year and 40 million tons below 1988 targets. Pravda, meanwhile, reported that the Soviet crime rate climbed nearly 17% in the past year, and attributed the rise partly to corruption spawned by new economic freedoms...
Such cooperative efforts tend to go against the grain in the U.S., where entrepreneurs often view their colleagues as blood rivals. "America has been wickedly competitive within itself," observes Robert Noyce, a co-inventor of the integrated circuit and near legendary figure from Silicon Valley who now heads Sematech. The danger is that by focusing too much on short-term competitive standings, U.S. industry will spend too little time preparing for the future. The most complex technologies require long-term planning and investments, and the payoffs, while potentially enormous, may be long delayed. But U.S. business leaders are showing signs...