North Dakota: The Big Dry

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The trade balance is involved in the complex equation that deals with the drying of America. After dismal years of crop surpluses, falling prices and sagging overseas markets, the federal program to sell foodstocks abroad and take millions of acres out of production was at last paying off. Wheat surpluses had dwindled by 35% in the past two years, and exports were up 75%. So far, Clayton Yeutter, the U.S. trade representative, is resisting the cries to stop selling grain overseas and preserve it for American markets. But if grain sales abroad must be halted, the frustrated overseas customers may be doubly hard to woo back when the granaries again bulge with surpluses -- as they will. When that day comes, farmers will complain and taxpayers will moan. And that is why farm policy is never settled.

Driving south along Highway 1804 above Cannon Ball, Leon Malard looked right and left reading the land and assessing the scorched crops, feeling the wind and watching for neighbors' activity. One was cutting hay in a narrow field. "Without last year's leftover it wouldn't be worth it," Malard said. "I was hoping to get some weeds, so I might have something to cut out of my fields. But not even the weeds came." He points at a patch of his land. "I couldn't even get the plow in that ground, it was baked so hard. The plow just rode up on top of it."

Battle after battle Malard fights with this capricious force called Nature. Right now, it seems, he is losing more than he is winning, but he is a man of almost endless patience. Nature, he knows, will sooner or later grow weary of its tantrum. When it does, he will still be around.