The Nation - News from Aug. 26, 1988

After a hearty breakfast at a Grange hall in Moscow, Ida., 64 Iowa farmers began harvesting free hay for their hungry livestock back home. Hay mowers began cutting grass on a field about 30 miles northeast of the Idaho Panhandle town, the first of 4,500 acres of northern Idaho land set aside in a government erosion-control program. The U.S. Department of Agriculture recently released the Conservation Reserve Program land, which is normally not farmed, for harvest by drought-afflicted farmers. As much as 5,000 tons of hay could be harvested, said Mike Tracy, a spokesman for the Idaho Farm Bureau, which organized the project in conjunction with the Iowa Farm Bureau.