Word: croplands
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...grain sits in huge stockpiles -- a sign that prices will stay low until those inventories can be reduced. Moreover, this year's farm- income figures were inflated by $22.4 billion in Government subsidies, including $12 billion paid to farmers to leave idle 68.5 million acres of cropland (an area bigger than Colorado). Now those payouts are threatened by Washington's efforts to slash the federal deficit. "This has been a good year, but everyone's looking over his shoulder," warns Iowa State University Economist Neil Harl. "There are still some dark clouds...
...whopper: 2.2 billion bu. Providence seems to be pushing us toward some rendezvous with disaster. The Corn Belt is like John Bunyan's idyllic Beulah -- or a dark Gehenna. Corn is king in the U.S., a $25 billion business that occupies one-quarter of the nation's cropland. This year's crop will be 8.3 billion bu., the second highest in history. In the corn country, half of a farmer's income is from Government payments for his unneeded grain...
...people -- more than four times the population of California -- are crammed into an area the size of Wisconsin. The cyclone aggravated already serious problems. It shattered much of the economic fabric of Bangladesh's coastal areas, leaving at least 30,000 cattle dead, about 3,000 sq. mi. of cropland ravaged, vital fishing grounds wasted. It also left tens of thousands of subsistence farmers both shelterless and penniless...
...Angeles: 48,000 palm trees; 16,732 registered poodles; 3,672 traffic lights; 46,000 acres still in cropland. Everything seems larger in Los Angeles. It is the biggest fishing port in America. It leads the U.S. in per capita sales of bottled water. The cities of Washington, Detroit, Denver, Boston, Milwaukee, Cleveland, Philadelphia and Providence combined would fit within the boundaries of the Los Angeles Unified School District...
Loans, federal subsidies such as deficiency and disaster payments, and price supports for crops help sodbusters as well as other agricultural producers. Entrepreneurs apply for price supports and, as required by federal law, take 15% to 20% of their cropland out of production. In effect, range plowers break prairie land that may have little agricultural value and collect money for keeping it out of cultivation. Says Bernie Spanogle, district forest ranger at the Pawnee National Grassland in Colorado: "People are farming the federal crop programs, not the land...