Word: lande
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...many experts believe the Government should drop its set-aside programs and once more urge farmers to produce. The U.S. and the world need all the food that American farmers can grow. Set-asides also tend to benefit big farmers, who can more easily take, say, 10% of their land out of production than small growers...
Inflation?and a realization by investors that farm land is a vital resource in a hungry
...world?has more than doubled the price of U.S. farm land since 1972, to an average $490 an acre last February; prime Midwestern corn and soybean land sells for $2,000 an acre. A tractor that sold for $16,000 in 1974 may cost almost twice as much now; it would have a few new features, but be no more powerful. The result is that farmers have been forced into financing decisions as intricate as those facing corporate treasurers. Borrowing money at interest rates of up to 12% to buy or rent additional land and invest in machinery can improve...
...supposedly cover most?not all?production costs. But no longer will Uncle Sam buy and store crops to prop the price; federal purchases these days are limited to small amounts for foreign aid, school-lunch programs and the like. Instead, the Government encourages farmers to store on their own land any produce they do not want to sell immediately, by offering low-interest loans to build storage facilities. All over the Midwest, shiny new galvanized-metal bins with conical roofs have become as prominent as the traditional white frame farmhouse...
...successful farmer today must understand enough engineering and science to participate in a technological upheaval that is changing the very shape of the land and the nature of his crops. Says Lawrence Rappaport, chairman of the department of vegetable crops at the University of California at Davis: "Agriculture is now in perpetual revolution, and there is no end in sight." People flying over the West and Midwest see an unusual pattern on the terrain below: not the familiar farm land with checkerboard squares, but large polka dots, the result of costly ($50,000 each) center-pivot irrigation machines that automatically...