1.   Charlie stared out at the open fields that must once have been productive farmland.

2.   Anything beyond that cuts into productive farmland, hands export business to overseas rivals, and slows rural business activity, the trade group said.

3.   California depends on illegal-alien labor to pick almost all crops in the most productive farmland in the country.

4.   The balance of the property, which is not productive farmland, is being donated to the Peconic Land Trust.

5.   These gains are threatened, however, by a growing scarcity of fresh water and a loss of topsoil and productive farmland.

6.   The treaty is meant to help countries in Africa and around the world slow the encroachment of deserts on productive farmland.

7.   Those dikes guard the polders, below-sea-level areas pumped dry and turned into productive farmland.

8.   Loss of productive farmland to development projects and desertification -- a problem heavily reported in the Chinese media -- was downplayed in the white paper.