Word: topsoil
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...trees?more than 300 different kinds on any given acre?for profitable lumbering. At a cost of $250,000 each, Ludwig imported giant Caterpillar "jungle crushers," overgrown bulldozers designed to pull down the natural jungle growth. But these machines proved useless because they damaged the unexpectedly delicate Amazon topsoil. Today one of the jungle crushers stands abandoned and rusting on the outskirts of Monte Dourado. The job is now being done by work gangs using machetes and chain saws to clear the land...
Scorched Earth; Officials at Hoffmann-La Roche, the Swiss-based company that owns Icmesa, have urged Italian authorities to destroy the factory, tear down houses, burn the surrounding vegetation and skim off a foot of topsoil over the entire area affected by the TCDD. Italian officials have not yet decided to adopt such a scorched-earth policy. But army troops have so far evacuated more than 700 people from villages near the plant, and authorities have ordered blood tests on some 15,000 people in the area. Officials are also taking some controversial steps to confine the effects...
...Raspberry plants and apple trees for backyards are big sellers in Portland. During the hot summer, Miami area gardeners turn to black-eyed peas and watermelons. Dick and Hope McKim of Miami even converted their swimming pool into a garden, filling it with layers of rock and sand, then topsoil. Says Mrs. McKim: "Now instead of the pool costing us $50 a month to maintain...
...attribute the lack of rain to an absence of sunspots, others to recurring drought cycles. In any event, parts of the Great Plains have received so little rain that they are actually drier than at the onset of the great drought of '34. Starved for moisture, the rich topsoil in hard-hit areas of the Great Plains is turning into a fine brown silt. Winds hurl the dust particles against the still-growing sprouts, until they lose their color...
...this year's harvest. Other sections are also suffering. In parts of the once lush wheat-growing belt that extends from New Mexico and Texas into Kansas and Iowa, the wheat shoots are stunted. Many farmers are choosing to sacrifice their crops in an effort to save the topsoil. By plowing their fields to turn the silt beneath less fragile clods and by planting soil-gripping crops, the farmers hope to conserve their valuable topsoil that otherwise may be swept away. Complicating the problem, unseasonably warm weather in some areas has produced an early infestation of cutworms and green...