Corn farming: the new new thing?

What do you do when you've made your fortune in the New Economy? Move on to the New New Economy - planting corn in the wide open farmlands of Nebraska.

Jeff Raikes, one of Microsoft's top hands, may end up doing just that. Raikes is set to hang up his mouse in September after a 26-year career that left him with responsibility for half of the software company's business.

Now, still only 49 and with more than half a billion dollars' worth of stock and options to his name, it seems the fields of his youth may be calling.

Raikes has always made much of his upbringing on a Nebraska farm. His brother, Ron, a Nebraska state senator, recently let on to an Omaha paper that Raikes had picked up 1,400 acres of farmland late last year. And when Observer caught up with him last week his thoughts seemed to be returning there. "With corn at $4 a bushel I could become an agri-business tycoon," he said.