Abbie Fentress Swanson

Abbie Fentress Swanson is KBIA's Harvest Public Media reporter.

Abbie covered arts and culture and veterans' issues for WNYC Radio in New York. In 2011, she won the Garden State Journalists Association "Best Radio Feature" award for her multimedia piece Music Therapy Helps Vets Control Symptoms of PTSD and was part of the team that won a 2010 Associated Press ââ

Around the Nation
3:52 am
Tue November 20, 2012

Drought Hurts U.S. Grain Exporters, Market Share

Transcript

RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:

And now for today's business bottom line. Last summer's drought has brought bad news this fall - low crop yields, especially of corn, plus higher prices. And a prediction from the Department of Agriculture that corn exports will be at a 40-year low. The U.S. still is the world's biggest supplier of corn, but this year American exporters will be quite as dominant as usual in the global corn market.

From Missouri, Abbie Fentress Swanson reports on the impact this is having.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

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Economy
1:54 pm
Thu November 8, 2012

Corn Belt Farmland: The Newest Real Estate Bubble?

Originally published on Thu November 8, 2012 3:02 pm

Howard Audsley has been driving through Missouri for the past 30 years to assess the value of farmland. Barreling down the flat roads of Saline County on a recent day, he stopped his truck at a 160-acre tract of newly tilled black land. The land sold in February for $10,700 per acre, double what it would have gone for five years ago.

Heading out into the field, Audsley picked up a clod of the dirt that makes this pocket of land some of the priciest in the state.

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