A Time for Planting in Illinois

"Burn down your cities and leave our farms," William Jennings Bryan once said, "and your cities will spring up again as if by magic, but destroy our farms and the grass will grow in the streets of every city in the country." Amid tales of urban blight, the U.S. may find solace in the enduring, seemingly endless reach of its fecund farmland. The nation is still sustained by the richest bounty of produce on earth, and it is sowing time again. TIME Correspondent Frank Merrick last week visited Erv Walters' farm in northern Illinois. His report:

ERV WALTERS is an archetypal American...