Close to 'total failure

Close to 'total failure' Iowa and Illinois are the wholesale rayban sunglasses top corn-producing states, according to the USDA, and usually account for about one-third of the U.S. crop. Indiana typically ranks fifth, says Chris Hurt, an agricultural economist at Purdue University. Much of Iowa is abnormally dry or in moderate drought, but its situation is not as bad as the one in Illinois and Indiana. About 61% of Indiana's corn crop is rated poor or very poor — the worst of any major corn-producing state, Hurt says. "Those crops are getting close to having total failure," he says. At this point in 1988, 90% of ray ban outlet Indiana's corn was rated in those two bottom categories. "This one is not yet as intense and horrible as 1988," he says, "but it's the only one that's close to comparable." Tell that to Bruce Ferguson, who walked into the Clunette Elevator Co. — which helps manage and stores crops — one day last week with a 6-inch ear of corn with silk hanging from it. The corn had not pollinated, which means that it would never produce full rows of kernels. Multiply that one ear by all the unirrigated corn planted on Ferguson's 1,400-acre farm for a sense of what the drought means to him. Only about 150 acres are irrigated, he says. "You have to be prepared for a pretty complete failure this year," says oakley sunglasses cheap sale 642 Ferguson, 60, who has farmed here since 1978.