Word: agro
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First, meet Andrew H. Golis ’06 and Chimaobi O. Amutah ’07, the agro-alchemists of the Cambridge Common protest blog (http://cambridgecommon.blogspot.com). Golis, veteran campus activist and former Crimson columnist, started the site late last year as an outlet for opinion and vitriol too hot for publication on this newspaper’s editorial pages. The effort floundered, and Golis decided to start anew this September. He brought Amutah on board, and in his words, “relaunched big time...
Last week still another attempt was on the verge of being plowed under in a contentious dispute with an Israeli-directed experimental farm. The commonwealth's secretary of agriculture Antonio Gonzalez Chapel has cut off the government's credit line for April-Agro Industries Inc., which is $33 million in debt, and announced that the commonwealth will handle the farm's winter harvest next month. April-Agro has refused to surrender, appealing to Governor Rafael Hernández-Col?...
...April-Agro's enterprising president, Morris Demel, 50, a Polish-born Jew who grew up in Cuba and fled to Puerto Rico after Castro's takeover, planned to grow produce on arid southern coast farmland once used for sugar cane. Importing five Israeli agronomists and applying drip-irrigation methods developed on Israeli kibbutzim, Demel initially wanted to devote 5,000 acres to fruits and vegetables. But seven years after he began the project, only 1,000 acres are under cultivation...
...government withdrew its support after the high-cost farm project had defaulted on its loans and seemed to have little prospect of ever reaching solvency. Critics charged that instead of concentrating on popular products like honeydew melons, peppers and tomatoes, April-Agro grew too many other crops, including plantains and cabbage. Demel counters that he has created a new export market for Puerto Rican produce. In 1979-80, when April-Agro began, the island grew only about 3,600 tons of tomatoes a year, valued at just $1.4 million; hardly any of the crop was fit for export...
...April-Agro controversy has also been clouded with a nativist suspicion of Demel and his new methods. Claridad, official newspaper of the pro-independence Puerto Rican Socialist Party, refers to Demel as the "Jew Cuban," and local planters refer to April-Agro as "the Israelis." The English-language San Juan Star, in urging the Governor to delay action against the experimental farm, pointed to "a deep-seated resentment against 'outside' farmers changing the way agriculture has been traditionally carried out." Hernández-Colón has stayed out of the dispute while his agriculture secretary attempts to negotiate a "painless" takeover...