Word: wheats
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...years old. She was graduated from Earlham College in Indiana in 1926, and after a period of piano study in Dayton, she yielded to a love of all things western and moved to Choteau, becoming the high school music teacher in 1928. It is a ranching community -- wheat mostly -- set on rolling land studded with spruce, fir and aspen, by the eastern face of the Rockies. Its winters can get quite brutal, and now and again an old hand decides to break the monotony by taking a lesson from Marge. Even if you have no ear at all, Marge...
...Government has long protected farmers' income by supporting 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...
...Administration, though, is prepared to offer some extra protection to the beleaguered American farmer. Last week President Reagan authorized the sale of Government-subsidized wheat to the Soviet Union. The Soviets have been buying little of the costly American grain, but the federal subsidies will bring the price down. Senate Majority Leader Robert Dole of Kansas, along with several Midwestern Republican Senators who are up for re-election this year, had lobbied the President to take the action...
While farmers fret about how to store the huge harvest, much tougher questions will loom as unavoidably as tarpaulin-covered mountains of wheat. The unsentimental truth is that America's farm industry, once a source of pride and power, has become an economic burden. Because so many other countries have improved their agricultural output, maintaining America's vast farming capacity is now a costly exercise in excess. During fiscal 1986 the expense to taxpayers for supporting farm programs will reach, according to the Government's estimates, $24 billion -- a 36% increase over last year. As exports shrivel and imports increase...
Other vast surpluses abound. At the beginning of last month, the U.S. held 1.9 billion bu. of wheat, a record overstock, and 847 million bu. of soybeans, almost 40% more than at the same time last year. Kansas alone held 178.8 million bu. of grain sorghum, a livestock feed, almost 80% more than in June 1985. The U.S. is producing a huge excess of milk as well, a problem reduced only partly by the USDA's program this year to pay thousands of dairy farmers some $1.8 billion to send their herds to slaughter or export markets...