Word: droughts
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Against meteorological odds, it has rained in Waynesburg, Pa., every July 29 for 85 of the last 95 years. Such rainfall regularity would come as welcome relief to farmers in the parched Midwest, now sweltering in its severest drought in a generation (see ECONOMY & BUSINESS). Rain Day has become an annual rite in Waynesburg (pop. 5,152) in the years since 1879, and last week the usual festivities, from square dances to a town picnic, were on the agenda. Few townspeople elected to hang black snakeskins on their fences as offerings to the rain gods as in days gone...
...soil and left corn stalks brittle, stunted and dead. From the Dakotas southward to Texas, from Kansas east to parts of Ohio, the most baleful weather in a generation is raising the specter of economic disaster for Midwest farmers and the businessmen who depend on them. The big drought is daily diminishing what had been estimated would be a bumper yield of corn, soybeans and other feed grains. Crops of spring wheat, oats and barley are also being reduced...
...inflationary food prices. Says Jim Tippett, an official of the Illinois Farm Bureau: "We need hot, sticky weather now, with plenty of rain, the kind of weather that makes people suffer." Last week some rain fell in the Midwest, but officials said it was not enough to end the drought...
Shrinking Income. In part because of the drought, Agriculture Department forecasts for the corn crop have been revised downward, from 6.7 billion bu. in May to 5.9 billion bu. two weeks ago. Since then, conditions have grown worse, and by last week the National Corn Growers Association was predicting that the corn harvest would drop "significantly below" 5.5 billion bu. v. 5.6 billion last year...
...small farmers, the drought could be ruinous. For example, Kenneth Grove, who invested heavily in weed killers and fertilizers to work his 220 acres in Tecumseh, Neb., has given up on part of his crop and is now mowing it to feed his 80-head dairy herd. On the other hand, many large and middle-size farmers, who earned the bulk of the $32 billion in agricultural income last year, have enough financial protection to tide them over. Indeed, many big wheat farmers, who brought in their winter harvest before the drought struck, stand to make a bundle because they...