Word: wheats
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Benedict makes a quick trip by pickup truck around his 3,500 acres of wheat and sugar beets. At each of many stops he whips out a pocket calculator and does some rapid figuring before giving the hired hands orders on, say, exactly how much pesticide to spray on each field. By 8 a.m. he is heading home to start the most important part of his day: several hours spent at a rolltop desk in his small study. There Benedict goes over computer print-outs analyzing his plantings acre by acre: inputs of seed, fertilizer, irrigation water, machine time; output...
...Carter Administration, which took office when farm prices were falling drastically, partially reversed the Butz policy. Besides urging farmers to participate in set-aside programs, it has, with considerable prodding from Congress, established target prices for wheat and corn that are above today's market quotes, even though these target prices by no means guarantee farmers a profit. Government outlays to support farm incomes have quadrupled in two years, to an estimated $7.9 billion in fiscal 1978. But the Administration has resisted pressure to set support prices still higher?even though Agriculture Secretary Bob Bergland last winter had to climb...
...result: instead of selling all their crops at harvest time, as they did for centuries (indeed, millenniums), farmers now spread sales all through the year. That forces them to face tricky questions: Will wheat or corn or soybean prices be higher next March than now, and if so will they be enough higher to justify storing 80% of the crop until then, or only 60% of it? To complicate matters further, a farmer can work out deals to sell part of his crop in October, say, but get the cash next January if that would be better for tax purposes...
Enough food is left over to make the export capacity of American agriculture the hope of the have-not world. Farm-product exports tripled in the past six years to almost $27 billion, helping mightily to offset the cost of imports. The U.S. exports more wheat, corn and other coarse grains (barley, oats, sorghum) than all the rest of the world combined. Pat Benedict and farmers like him are America's best hope to counter the trade challenge presented by the oilmen of Araby and the energetic manufacturers of Japan. U.S. food exports would be higher still were...
...Hsinching commune, like any farm within hundreds of miles of Shanghai, exists to meet the city's insatiable appetite. Its 2,330 acres are planted mostly with vegetables, though the commune also raises rice, wheat, animal fodder and some livestock. The peasants are particularly proud of their plump chickens, which they say are of a Chinese breed; in fact, they are White Leghorns and (appropriately) Rhode Island Reds...