Blain's Farm & Fleet is a regional chain of 38 retail stores in Wisconsin, Illinois, and Iowa.
Even so, work by Yang and others has proved that senior leaders in Beijing knew of the famine as early as 1958. To distribute resources evenly will only ruin the Great Leap Forward, Mao warned colleagues a year later. When there is not enough to eat, people starve to death.
As the total economic toll is estimated at more than $22 billion, Chinaâs devastating floods represent the 5th costliest non-US weather disaster on record. Only the 1998 floods, which resulted in losses of $44 billion (in 2016 dollars), have been more damaging.