Word: wheats
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...eruption blew down 150 sq. mi. of timber worth about $200 million, caused an estimated $222 million in damage to wheat, alfalfa and other crops as far east as Missoula, Mont., and buried 5,900 miles of roads under ash. Clearing them could cost another $200 million. The blast created a 20-mile log jam along the Columbia River that blocked shipping between Longview, Wash., and Astoria, Ore. Volcanic mud carried by the river choked the harbor of Portland. Officials estimated that the ports would lose $5 million a day until dredges could clear a new channel through the silt...
Crops within three miles of the crater were destroyed. Downwind, in a triangular swath stretching 200 miles to the east, about 10% of the crops suffered some damage from the dust. Several fields of alfalfa and wheat in eastern Washington were flattened by the weight of ash. When wetted by rains, like those that fell four days after the blast, ash on the ground forms a thick cement-like glop that young shoots may be unable to break through...
Still, the overall damage to wheat in Washington, Idaho and Montana, and to Washington's abundant cherries and apples, is likely to be minor. Alfred Halvorson, a soil expert at Washington State University, believes farmers will lose no more crops than they would to a "very heavy dust storm." Some scientists feared at first that the ash might produce a devastating acid rain, but tests showed that the dust is about as acid as orange juice. The ash contains no more sulfur than ordinary rainwater does...
...industry -Pittsburgh, Detroit and Chicago-plus many of the farm states. Farmers are suffering from the ancient miseries of drought and locusts in addition to the more modern plagues of low commodity prices and high interest rates. The situation is particularly grim in the Dakotas and Minnesota, where spring wheat is coming up brown for lack of rain...
While these travails are felt most acutely in the U.S., the situation is common to nearly all Western nations. Since the mid-1970s, industrial economies have grown about as well as wheat in a drought, while inflation has expanded dangerously. Even countries that have adapted best to recent economic problems, notably West Germany and Japan, suffer inflation or slow growth. The world money system that functioned like a Swiss watch for a quarter-century has been sending off alarms. Gold, the barbarous relic that Shakespeare called the "common whore of mankind," has become the refuge for a world fearful...