Word: commonwealths
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Despite rich soil and an extended Caribbean growing season, Puerto Rico has not managed to produce enough food to sustain itself since the U.S. Army seized the island from Spain in 1898. Almost 70% of the commonwealth's food is imported; the government spends $1.2 billion a year buying groceries from abroad for its 3.3 million citizens. Local officials have tried without much success to stimulate food production. Though the commonwealth has spent $60 million to develop rice farming, only 3,000 acres have been brought into production...
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?...
Demel and his government adversaries are both struggling under a legacy of neglect for agriculture that began with Operation Bootstrap in the 1950s, when the commonwealth began steering its economy away from almost total dependence on sugar cane toward a more diversified industrial base in electronics and light manufacturing. Some observers believe that the island's agriculture is still wedded psychologically to sugar and is not truly interested in any other crop. Says Fernando Santiago, operator of a 600-acre farm in Santa Isabel: "Agriculture doesn't believe in vegetables...
DAVID WIMPY, 49, CULTIVATES 800 ACRES OF CORN AND OTHER crops in Kentucky's hilly Amish country. As a member of the 2,300-strong Hopkinsville Elevator Cooperative, he is also part owner of the hottest new thing to hit town, Commonwealth Agri-Energy, an ethanol plant that started up a year ago in a stream-fed rock quarry a mile south of his land. The cooperative has a 94% stake in the $32 million plant, which has made an estimated $40 million in sales over the past year from ethanol and its by-products. Plant manager Mick Henderson says...
Defection sounds like a bad word, but in reality the runners may still be patriotic as ever. They just moved on to greener pastures. When the commonwealth gold medalist, Stephen Cherono, moved to Qatar, there was uproar in Kenya, especially when he, as Saif Saeed Shaheen, went on to beat his former teammates at the Paris athletics championships. More recently, Bernard Lagat became a U.S. citizen, again amid further protest. Now, many wonder whether these athletes should be allowed to compete for their new host nations...