Word: harvests
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...harvest begins, the twin plagues of drought and overabundance have dealt yet another blow to America's stricken farmers. In the following pages, TIME's Hugh Sidey looks at the ravaged Southeast and the surfeit in his native Midwest; a moving letter from a North Carolina farmwife reveals the personal anguish of a lifetime of work that ends in bankruptcy; and a worldwide assessment of the farm dilemma shows why it is proving so intractable...
...farm prices and by making direct subsidy payments. For many crops, it has established loan rates, like $2.40 for a bushel of wheat in 1986. These rates put a floor under prices. Farmers can then borrow from the Government at the rate set for their crops, offering their unsold harvest as collateral. If the farmers manage to sell their crops on the market at a price higher than the loan rate, they can repay the loan and keep the difference. But if the growers are offered only a price lower than the loan rate, they can forfeit the crop...
...longer satisfied with apples and oranges, peas and beans, a growing number of Americans are titillating their restless palates with exotic fruits and vegetables. Mostly tropical and native to Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, this colorful harvest used to be found only in ethnic neighborhoods. Now many of these edibles are becoming standards, not only at high-fashion greengrocers but in the supermarkets of several major chains. "Foods that look strange now (as ginger, shallots, bean sprouts and even avocados did not so long ago) may soon be common in our culinary vocabulary," writes Elizabeth Schneider in her carefully...
Bolivia has tried disincentives. Last December the Paz Estenssoro government offered peasants $250 for every hectare of coca they did not harvest. It was all the government thought it could afford. But peasants, who can earn up to $10,000 a hectare by selling coca, were not enthusiastic. The joint U.S.-Bolivian operation against drug processing has a similar purpose: it is intended to force down the value of the leaves, making the crops much less profitable...
...exactly the right amount of rain at the proper intervals, says Illinois' Vercler, "crop development is just about the best ever." Last year's corn crop was the largest in history, 8.9 billion bu., of which a record 5 billion bu. is left over in storage. The expected bumper harvest of 8 billion bu. this year, smaller in volume than 1985's because an increasing number of farmers have taken some acreage out of production to qualify for Government support programs, will send prices plummeting even further into the cellar...