Word: valleys
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...this time of year, fields in the Imperial Valley, which straddles the California-Mexico border, should be bursting with ripe melons ready for shipment to markets around the U.S. Instead, 95% of the fall crop has been lost and much of the rest lies rotting on the vine. Harvests of lettuce, broccoli, cauliflower, squash, citrus fruits, table grapes, sugar beets, carrots and cabbages are threatened as well. Total crop losses in Imperial County and nearby Riverside County have already reached $90 million. Says melon grower Ben Abatti, who has been farming in the area since 1956: "It is total disaster...
...agent of disaster is a 3-mm (one-tenth-in.) insect known to scientists as the poinsettia strain of the sweet-potato whitefly but to farmers as the Superbug. Millions of these voracious insects have spread over the Imperial Valley, massing on the undersides of leaves and sucking plants dry, weakening or killing them in the process. Farmers first noticed the flies getting worse in July, and by September swarms of them looked like white clouds. They covered windshields and got stuck between people's teeth. Farm workers had trouble inhaling and eventually had to wear masks. Not since...
...exodus of businesses from California was also beginning, and manufacturing quietly declined 18%. States from Nevada to Oklahoma are trying to entice California companies with lower taxes and wages, less regulatory hassling and far more affordable housing. One aerospace-component manufacturer with a 40-worker factory in the Sacramento Valley got phone calls from Texas Governor Ann Richards and was invited to go turkey shooting with the lieutenant governor of Oklahoma, and is in fact weighing a possible move. A Baldassare poll showed that 1 out of every 7 medium-to-large companies (those with more than 100 employees) thinks...
ECONOMY: Silicon Valley slumps into a wrenching mid-life crisis...
CITIES: What it's like in two of America's fastest growing boomtowns, Fresno and Moreno Valley...