Word: topsoil
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...description of the Dust Bowl is as tragically apt today as it was in the 1930s. The drought and winds that four decades ago turned large parts of the U.S. into an agricultural disaster area have returned to some areas of the Great Plains, parching crops and whipping topsoil into sun-darkening clouds. In the 1930s the victims of the drought-the impoverished Okies memorialized in Steinbeck's novel-were lured westward by California's verdant fruit groves. But this time California is suffering from its most severe drought since 1921 and is in the midst...
...more the coal industry investigated the Western reserves, the more it liked what it found. Some of the coal lies in gigantic, 100-ft.-thick seams close to the surface. All a coal company must do is strip off the topsoil and gouge up the mineral. Mining cost per ton: a mere $3. Even after transportation costs to the East are figured in, the coal can compete in price with that of Appalachia...
...those states of the long horizon and the rich topsoil, the changes are already being felt. Land is up to as much as $ 1,500 to $2,000 an acre. The kids with college degrees are coming back home to the farms. There are more jobs in the small towns The corporate giants are planning to acquire more land, and some state legislatures like the one in Iowa, are battling back by setting up corporate-ownership limits to help preserve the family units. It is another drama of change, with potential for pain and fraud, but richer still with portents...
Argentina is the saddest place on the continent: ravaged by years of misgovernment, terrorism from the left and right, inflation that runs at 20% to 30% a month, despair and cynicism among the large and seemingly helpless bourgeoisie. How this highly favored land, with its 10 ft. of topsoil and 25 million homogeneous people of European descent, achieved such a colossal mess defies understanding. For the past six weeks the word has been that a coup could come any day, with the army taking over from the pathetic Isabel Peron, but there is only modest hope that this would make...
...problem. This is the richest and most fertile farmland in the world--nothing in Iowa or the Ukraine can compare to it. The whole country is a delta formed by two of the mightiest rivers in the world, the Ganges and the Brahmaputra. Since the Brahmaputra is essentially liquid topsoil and the Ganges flowing shit, the resource base for producing the highest crop yields in the world are there. With their weather which allows a twelve month growing season the Bengalis should be able to produce enough crops to feed 300 million people. That is, not only feed themselves well...