Word: crops
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Dates: during 1990-1990
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Annual "bests" and "mosts" express a human instinct for putting things in order. This year's crop also reflects a shift from a time of ostentation to one of restraint, unease and do-goodism -- plus flashes of camp and cheekiness...
...minister for minerals and energy in New South Wales, Australia, offered tittering legislators a plan for a low-cost energy source: confiscated marijuana. Burning pot to produce electricity made sense, he claimed, because the crop gives off eight times as much heat as coal...
...across western California, in huge steel tanks and small oak barrels, grape juice from the autumn harvest is bubbling to be reborn as wine -- and omens for the 1990 vintage look good. True, late spring rains on the north coast meant that the crop of Chardonnay, the state's premier white-wine grape, was smaller than normal. No such problem with the reds, though. And the nose knows. Jim Fetzer, one of 10 siblings who run the family's 1,400-acre vineyard in Mendocino County, says his vintners tell him that "the winery hasn't smelled this good...
...problem is not food supply -- for one thing, the U.S.S.R. had a record grain crop this year -- but distribution. Farmers have been holding back produce from the state, hoping to make more lucrative cash and barter deals elsewhere. A crumbling transportation system has left crops rotting in the fields or in warehouses. Soviet citizens grumble that many of the delays are deliberate, the work of diehard local bureaucrats seeking to undermine Gorbachev. The very fact that many Soviets have been stockpiling foodstuffs at home, though it provides them a cushion against the future, has only added to the sense...
Bolivia and Peru. The coca cash cow continues to feed the economies of both countries, providing peasant farmers with a lucrative crop. Bolivia obtains more than a third of its $1.2 billion in foreign exchange from cocaine, while Peru gets about a quarter of its $4 billion. Although both nations would like to cease their dependence on cocaine, they dare not press too strongly for fear of provoking civil unrest. In Bolivia the use of U.S. troops in 1986 to destroy drug labs sparked violent protests. Peru's new President, Alberto Fujimori, fearful of pushing recruits into the arms...