Word: harvests
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...greatest harvest spectacle the world has ever seen is rushing toward its finish this week. Half a million thundering combines with dust devils spiraling like proud sentinels above their clattering jaws are cutting through 140 million acres of U.S. corn and soybean fields, night and day, lifting a golden bounty that will break every record in the books...
...weeds. When blooms appeared, cool weather encouraged more pods, and they in turn filled with big, healthy beans. All of this was followed by dryer weather, setting the perfect stage for the final act of maturing and providing the firm footing in the fields needed for the monstrous harvest machines...
...sheer bulk of the harvest rolling into the towering prairie elevators and barges along the great rivers is not the entire story. The yield per acre of land has been phenomenal. Early government estimates were for 33.5 bushels per acre of soybeans. That went up to 40.5 bushels per acre before the harvest began. "That is the distinguishing feature," claims economist Collins. "I've never seen an estimate move so far above the trend line. Statistically, it is one chance in a hundred." The average for corn leaped from 127 bushels to 134 bushels per acre...
...year before; he and his wife Julie got by only because of a nursery operation that she had started in plastic greenhouses. But last week, as his trucks filled with corn and soybeans lumbered off to storage bins, Hurst could pause with Julie and exult, "I love the harvest season...
...ultimate irony of this great harvest drama lies beyond the shores of the U.S. Lester Brown, head of the Worldwatch Institute, suggested earlier this year that unless there were dramatic changes in population growth and food supply, the world soon would not be able to feed itself. "Food security will replace military security as the principal concern of many nations over the next 40 years," he said. The American harvest miracle -- and even last week's announcement by the International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines that a new, higher-yielding strain of rice would boost world production...