Word: cropped
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...pipe tobacco) to local markets and largely kept companies from exploring the benefits of branding. The first strong national tobacco brand didn't emerge until near the end of the Civil War, when both Union and Confederate soldiers in Durham, North Carolina raided a local farmer's tobacco crop while waiting for a surrender to be completed. After the war was over, these soldiers began writing to the farmer, Mr. John Green, requesting more; Green went on to establish the successful Bull Durham Tobacco Company. (See pictures of classic cigarette...
...Virtually all food in rural Africa today is de facto organic, because small farmers there cannot afford to purchase any nitrogen fertilizer. Fertilizer use per hectare in Africa is only 1/10 as high as in Europe or North America, causing crop yields per hectare to be only 1/5 as high as their Northern counterparts. Total production level has been declining on a per capita basis for the past three decades...
These organic, local, and slow African food systems are also bad for the natural environment. Attempting to grow more food to keep pace with an increasing population, Africa’s farmers have shortened their fallow times, which exhausts soil nutrients. They also expand cropping and grazing onto more erodible lands, cutting more trees and destroying more wildlife habitat. Roughly 70 percent of all deforestation in Africa comes from this expansion of low-yield farming. It would be better if these farmers increased crop yields on land already cleared by applying some nitrogen fertilizer, but that would violate the mystical...
...Colombia, the world's third biggest coffee producer, even as a government plan to replace old coffee trees with new, higher-yielding ones had put some areas out of production until the young trees mature. Combined, the twin pressures have squeezed Colombian coffee output by 16% in the current crop year, according to the ICO, which represents exporting and importing countries worldwide. Wet weather also stymied production to the north, in Central America, driving up prices there too. (See pictures of coffee...
...price-conscious consumers in Europe and the U.S., that may augur a shot of good news. Consider the example of cocoa. Futures prices for the crop have tumbled in recent weeks amid signs of dwindling demand for chocolate products in mature markets. The European Cocoa Association said last month that grinding - the process that turns the crop into cocoa butter or powder and a handy proxy for demand - by its members fell 11% in the first quarter of this year. Grinding across the U.S., Canada and Mexico fell by slightly more in the same period. That's prompted some manufacturers...