It had reached just 40 feet down by 6 p.m. Watching from her farm where emergency specialists have worked around the clock since the disaster struck, Lori Arnold saluted rescuers who surrendered to catnaps under trees as they refused to leave the rescue patch of rolling pasture directly above the miners.
The farming unions held an emergency summit on Monday to discuss the crisis.
As Britain's four major farming unions held an emergency summit in London to discuss the crisis in the industry, Meurig Raymond said the country would become increasingly beholden to overseas producers unless drastic action was taken to help farms survive.
The federal agriculture secretary, Ann M. Veneman, has declared Nevada a disaster area because of prolonged drought, making ranchers and farmers eligible for federal emergency farm loans.
Today the management of the Union Square Greenmarket will donate all the farmers' fees to Farm Aid's emergency relief fund.
Risking a presidential veto, the Senate today rejected a Republican proposal to limit emergency farm aid to $5.5 billion, pushing ahead with a Democratic measure worth $2 billion more.
The Senate Agriculture Committee approved a $7.4 billion emergency farm bill, adding $2 billion more than a measure passed by the House and supported by the Bush administration.
Hence Mr Clinton's pledge to buy 2.5m tons of wheat and give it to needy third-world countries, and hence a proposal by congressional Democrats to offer $500m in emergency farm assistance.
"Locally grown tomatoes normally get $15 to $20 a box" at wholesale, said John Mishanec, a pest management specialist at Cornell who has been visiting farms and organizing emergency growers' meetings across upstate New York.
"I just didn't want to face all of these dear people and tell them that I could not come to their farm for an emergency, and then when I showed up have them say, 'You know that prize cow you didn't come for died,' " he said.
