Word: droughts
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...Sahelian zone countries of Western Africa--Senegal, Mauritania, Mali, Upper Volta, Niger and Chad--Western science and technology in an indiscriminate and "minimal" way, has actually increased the amount of devastation wrought by a 6-year old drought. A famine in the six countries last year left as many as 100,000 dead and 7 million others dependent on foreigners' food handouts. The famine continues and every day more West African nomads die under the hot desert sun. An FAO report on the Sahel says that the destructive farming and grazing practices now more frequent than ever in the Sahel...
With the Government openly aiming for an eventual reversal of the drop in wholesale meat prices, the consumer's best hope for lower food bills lies in the grain belt, where record winter wheat and corn harvests are shaping up. Drought, plant disease and heavy rains have cut the crops below earlier estimates, but the Agriculture Department still projects the wheat harvest at 1.5 billion bushels, or 21% more than...
...Africa, drought continues for the sixth consecutive year, adding terribly to the toll of famine victims. During 1972 record rains in parts of the U.S., Pakistan and Japan caused some of the worst flooding in centuries. In Canada's wheat belt, a particularly chilly and rainy spring has delayed planting and may well bring a disappointingly small harvest. Rainy Britain, on the other hand, has suffered from uncharacteristic dry spells the past few springs. A series of unusually cold winters has gripped the American Far West, while New England and northern Europe have recently experienced the mildest winters within...
...great belt of dry, high-altitude polar winds -the so-called circumpolar vortex-that sweep from west to east around the top and bottom of the world. Indeed it is the widening of this cap of cold air that is the immediate cause of Africa's drought. By blocking moisture-bearing equatorial winds and preventing them from bringing rainfall to the parched sub-Sahara region, as well as other drought-ridden areas stretching all the way from Central America to the Middle East and India, the polar winds have in effect caused the Sahara and other deserts to reach...
...patterns change only slightly in the near future in one or more of the three major grain-exporting countries-the U.S., Canada and Australia -global food stores would be sharply reduced. University of Toronto Climatologist Kenneth Hare, a former president of the Royal Meteorological Society, believes that the continuing drought and the recent failure of the Russian harvest gave the world a grim premonition of what might happen. Warns Hare: "I don't believe that the world's present population is sustainable if there are more than three years like...