
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, May 30, 1990                   TAG: 9005300099
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: The Baltimore Sun
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

'FARMER'S' FORESIGHT 20/20

A Round Hill, Va., man who described himself in 1979 as "just a dumb farmer" has shown he actually had a lot of smarts when it came to predicting what would happen in the world in the 1980s.

Jack Rankin Jr., now 59, is the winner of $10,000 from a Forbes Magazine-sponsored contest in which applicants had to provide estimates in 1980 - looking 10 years into the future - for items such as the value of the dollar, the prime rate, the size of the world population and the price of a Big Mac.

"If you're so smart, here's $10,000," wrote the late Malcolm Forbes in his business magazine a decade ago. "All you have to do between now and this year's end is to send me your estimates of what the numbers will be for these 35 items at the end of the decade - Dec. 31, 1989."

Rankin's foresight was shown in such categories as the daily amount of U.S. oil imports. He guessed 8 million barrels, down from 8.1 million in 1979. The actual amount imported was 7.9 million.

Rankin also predicted the number of U.S. steel mills would decline from 154 in 1979 to 126 in 1989. The actual figure: 127. Rankin said that the U.S. population in 1989 would reach 247 million. The actual figure: 249 million.

Not bad.

"I may just be a dumb farmer, but I sure know good odds when I see `em," Rankin wrote on his 1979 entry.

Reached Tuesday at his 10-acre Shenandoah Valley farm, Rankin said, "$10,000 for a 15-cent stamp and a little time - that's good odds."

Rankin is not actually a farmer - though he does raise a few chickens. He works for Honeywell Federal Systems in McLean, Va., as a communications support group manager.

"I'm also into investments on the side," said Rankin.

by CNB