Word: harvests
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Idle Pumps. The most threatening effect of the power shortage is on agriculture. This year, the combination of drought and fertilizer shortages is likely to hold India's grain harvest low enough to cause near famine; the power scarcity worsens the situation by making electric irrigation pumps all but useless. In Punjab state, wealthy farmers had purchased diesel pumps to use when the electric pumps failed, but the oil troubles have made diesel fuel scarce too. Gas stations selling diesel fuel have to be protected by policemen from mobs of farmers who wait for days for tank trucks...
...Rumors that the Arabs were about to lift their oil embargo against the U.S. also eased fears of uncontrollable inflation. The present prices, however, are still far higher than a year ago, and few experts are predicting any further substantial drop until the dimensions of this year's harvest are clearer, both in the U.S. and abroad. Rising costs of farm labor, fertilizer and machinery will also work against a further price drop...
...grain production for the 1974-75 crop year is expected to total nearly a billion tons-31 million tons more than the year before. For the first time in two years there is enough wheat to come close to meeting demand in the months ahead. Australia alone has just harvested 440 million bushels, more than double last year's crop. Adequate supplies of livestock feed also seem likely. Brazil's record soybean harvest is now being sold round the world and, after a disappearance of a year and a half, Peruvian anchovies, used as a livestock feed supplement...
...getting rid of controls, Congress and the Administration are making a risky bet that a record harvest this fall, and a potential drop in oil prices resulting from increased supplies will take much of the steam out of the present inflation. If they are wrong, the big loser will be the already price-burdened U.S. consumer...
...some farmers are speculating in a way. Last year Illinois Farmer Elliott Y. Johnson, 51, earned 50% more than in 1972 because the price of the produce he sold more than doubled. Soybeans, for example, rose to $8.60 per bu., from $3.65. Johnson held back more than half his harvest for sale this year, when prices could go still higher. Meanwhile, he plans to buy a new $19,000 tractor and make expensive improvements on his grain elevator. "Now," Johnson chuckles, "is a real good tune for a farmer to be paying off his debts...