Word: green
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...facilities in a way that may make them more profitable, and provide these companies with money that will go toward the purchase of capital goods. In other words, providing money for corporations to upgrade polluting facilities causes large ripple effects to industries that market the materials to create a "green" corporate world. It probably does as much for the environment as building a wind farm does. And, it stimulates capital spending...
Odiambo's demonstration plots are an opening salvo in a battle between two very different agricultural philosophies. The goal itself is not in dispute: a healthier, wealthier Africa, one that can feed itself and perhaps even export. Both sides also agree that the solution should be green. The disagreement lies over just what that word means. (See pictures of Africa under water...
...just as much corn and soybeans as conventional farms. While they required more labor, the cost was more than offset by savings in commercial nitrogen, insecticides and herbicides. In Africa, where labor is cheap and capital scarce, the benefits would be magnified. According to Indian environmentalist Vandana Shiva, past green revolutions boosted production of wheat and rice at the expense of other food. Using land for cash crops, she argues, actually decreased total food production. "You're losing because you're measuring only the single commodity," Shiva says...
...Odiambo's backers, green means agricultural bounty. The Kenyan shopkeeper is one of hundreds of agricultural dealers who have been given credit and training by the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), a high-profile effort to boost the production of small-scale farmers through better agricultural technology. Funded by the Rockefeller and Bill and Melinda Gates foundations and chaired by former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan, the group takes its name from earlier green revolutions in Latin America and Asia, where the introduction of hybrid seeds and chemical fertilizers is credited with rescuing hundreds...
...AGRA also has its critics - those who support a revolution in an entirely different shade of green. For them, the fact that African farming hasn't changed in over a century is a feature, not a bug. It provides an opportunity to replace industrial farming with organic practices that can be just as productive, but far more sustainable. At the St. Jude Family project in southern Uganda, double-decker animal pens open onto corn, cabbage, bananas and crawling green beans. The earth is contoured to reduce runoff and erosion. Spring onions serve as natural pest control. Legumes fix nitrogen...