1968 - Agriculture

Agriculture

Improved IR-8 rice strains from the IRRI in the Philippines produce record yields in Asia (see 1962; 1964). But the "miracle" rice requires more fertilizer and water than do such traditional strains as Bengawan, Intam, Peta, and Sigadio. IR-8 has little innate resistance to a virus carried by green leaf hoppers, and Filipinos do not like the cooking and eating qualities of the sticky new rice milled from IR-8.

India's wheat production is 50 percent above last year's level as a result of intensive aid by Ford Foundation workers, who have introduced new Pitic 62 and Penjamo 62 wheat strains from Mexico.

Desert locusts devastate crops in Saudi Arabia and other countries along the Red Sea in the first major locust plague since 1944.

The average U.S. farm acre can produce 70 bushels of corn, up from 25 in 1916, and some farmers get 200 bushels (see 1973).

U.S. crop acreage produces yields 80 percent above those in 1920; the output per breeding animal has roughly doubled since then.

U.S. farms have 5 million tractors, 900,000 grain combines, 780,000 hay balers, 660,000 corn pickers and shellers. Major crops are all harvested by machine.

Farm labor represents only 7 percent of the U.S. workforce, down from 10 percent in 1960, although another 32 percent of the workforce is engaged in supplying the farmer or handling his produce.

The average U.S. farm subsidy is nearly $1,000, up from $175 in 1960, as the number of U.S. farms continues to drop off substantially. Many farmers receive far in excess of the average subsidy (see 1967).

A nationwide boycott of table grapes organized by César Chavez of the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee gains support from much of the public (see 1962). Chavez dramatizes "La Causa" ("The Cause") with long fasts.