1961 - Agriculture

Agriculture

The United States has a wheat carry-over of 1.4 billion bushels in July, depressing farm prices, and the corn carry-over in October exceeds 2 billion bushels, a record that will stand for more than 20 years. The Kennedy administration will introduce an emergency feed-grain program to reduce acreage planted to such grain (see 1963).

Widespread mechanical harvesting of processing tomatoes for use in canning, ketchup, paste, sauces, tomato juice, and tomato soup begins in California as farmers plant the tough-skinned VF 145-B7879 variety developed by researchers at the Davis campus of the University of California. Rising labor costs have threatened the industry in California, whose fields produce much of the world's processing tomato crop. By 1975 the state will be producing more than 7 million tons of processing tomatoes per year, up from 1.3 million in 1954 (table tomatoes will continue to be hand-picked, partly because machine-harvested tomatoes must be in rows separated by wide spaces to permit passage of machines).

Banana king Samuel Zemurray dies of Parkinson's disease at New Orleans November 30 at age 84.