Values rose slowly and steadily through the early 1970s, then took off with the burst of grain exports to the Soviet Union.

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President Clinton will undoubtedly make a well-publicized gesture of shipping some grain and then fob off further efforts on existing international relief agencies.

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The cabin trim on our test car was an exquisite claret-colored Nappa top grain leather, set off with alloy and lacquer-black wood trim.

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In 2008, the last time Russia banned grain exports, it set off a wave of panic buying among importers in the Middle East and North Africa.

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"You can tell that people are keeping their money close to them, waiting for resolution, " said Kent Peppler, a grain farmer in the town of Mead who has put off buying machinery.

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But the best way to head off these unwelcome developments may be to allow farmers to diversify out of grain, into more profitable products.

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And so every fall, I'm off to the store to buy some kind of miso made with some kind of grain that I sincerely hope I'll figure out how to use sometime soon.

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Thus there are few broken lines to parallel the cratered surfaces and broken-off noses and limbs of the sculpture, not even lines or tones showing the teeth or grain of paper.

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Although the plant springing forth from that seed is healthy and can go about its business of producing grain, say, quite normally, the grain that it produces will not grow if planted, because the activated terminator gene has killed off the seed's reproductive bits.

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