Word: topsoil
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...Black topsoil, rolling 350 miles west and south of Buenos Aires, has nourished Argentina's agricultural past; but for its heavy-industrial future, Argentina is looking toward continent's-end Patagonia. Outwardly, Patagonia seems little more than 300,000 sq. mi. of wasteland lashed by 60-m.p.h. antarctic winds, blinded by spinning dust devils, cursed by endless drought that is relieved by only 5 in. of rain a year. Its 500,000 inhabitants earn a rugged living by running 18 million sheep and 1,500,000 goats on scrub grass...
...with the brains to take advantage of Ecuador's rich soil, it brought the boom. As the dread Panama disease, a killing blight, ravaged older banana plantations through Central America, Galo Plaza spent every dollar his government could spare to open up the virgin coastal plain, where rich topsoil lay three feet thick. In ten years Ecuador built 1,600 miles of road. United Fruit opened a 7,000-acre plantation. Poor settlers from the highlands joined in and got 124 acres of government land free. Now Ecuador is the world's biggest banana exporter, with shipments...
...stone and earth crashed into the caverns, the three tunnel mouths spouted out flying stone and dust like miniature volcanoes. Screaming men and women ran bloodily from the caves, dragging with them other workers who had been knocked unconscious. Groping through the thick fog, slipping on the wet clay topsoil, they screamed for help. The village priest and the schoolteacher spread the alarm, and fare brigades soon arrived from the Belgian cities of Hasselt and Tongres. and from the nearby Dutch city of Maastricht. They saw with horror that the hill was still moving convulsively, with craters 10 ft. wide...
...carrier boys to home-deliver fully 85% of the Sunday papers. In all, the Cowles brothers have a 275,000-square-mile hegemony: the Des Moines Register (circ. 220,221), Tribune (circ. 128,824) and Sunday Register (circ. 515,599) blanket Iowa like the state's fertile black topsoil; the Minneapolis Tribune (circ. 208,236), Star (circ. 290,960) and Sunday Tribune (circ. 630,035) sell throughout Minnesota and North and South Dakota, cut a swath through western Wisconsin...
Clouds of Dust. A miracle it was not. It was a triumph of technology over nature. For the second straight year, the prairie earth was made to yield more moisture than it received. An almost snowless winter gave way to an arid spring; by June topsoil began to blow in a grim reminder of the Dirty Thirties. "Every time there was a sprinkle." said a Moose Jaw farmer, "I'd go out and kick the soil. All I got was a cloud of dust...