Word: wheats
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...hosts surely needed the cheering up. America's 2.4 million farmers are struggling to survive the worst slump since the Depression, caught in a vise of rising costs and falling prices. Though they are expected to chalk up near record crops of wheat (73.8 million metric tons) and corn (208 million metric tons) this year, the silo-busting harvests will only push low prices even lower. Since 1975, as farm expenses have nearly doubled (from $75.9 billion to $141.5 billion), net farm income has fallen. Profits, which declined from $32.7 billion in 1979 to $22.9 billion last year...
...long-term pact with Moscow that would guarantee sales over several years and assure them of a buyer for their bulging surpluses. Reagan's decision clearly left most of them disappointed. The extension permits the Soviet Union to buy a minimum of 6 million tons of corn and wheat, but requires further consultation between Washington and Moscow for a deal of more than 8 million tons. Farmers believe that the U.S. could easily sell Moscow as much as 23 million tons over the next year. The U.S.S.R. has just suffered its fourth bad harvest...
...immediate effect on grain prices would have been negligible unless the Soviets had signed on for astronomical amounts of grain. The farmers' central problem is that bumper crops and record surpluses have put grain prices at dismal lows. In Kansas, where farmers have just harvested a record wheat crop of 440 million bu., grain is selling at a meager $3.65 per bu., down from $4.05 a year ago and from over $5 in 1973. In Oklahoma, where wheat is selling at $3.20 per bu., farmers invest nearly $6 to harvest each bushel. These are the mathematics of desperation...
...farmers are hurting equally. Grain farmers are in the worst shape: corn producers are even worse off than wheat growers because there is less demand abroad for their crop. Those who raise hogs and cattle are doing relatively better, thanks to climbing meat prices and, ironically for grain growers, the low cost of feed. Dairymen, who make up only 13% of all farmers, are faring best of all, since Washington buys up nearly all of their surplus products; last year the Federal Government paid out more than $2 billion in dairy price supports...
...question is how much time. As Bob Kerr, a wheat grower in Altus, Okla., and lifelong Democrat, puts it, "I'll admit our problems didn't start with Reagan. But farmers just couldn't be worse off than they are now. If things don't change, the farm economy will certainly be an issue in two more years...