Word: lande
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...outcry over Mugabe's role in wrecking Zimbabwe has come a decade too late. Unleashing a reign of terror on white settlers, Mugabe confiscated the farms of non-Africans, broke the land up into small, unproductive plots and distributed it to landless Africans. As a result, Zimbabwe's agriculture is in shambles today and its economy a well-documented ruin after years of prosperity. The West, however, said nothing about this theft of land, fearing that it would be "politically incorrect" to criticize racially motivated land reform. For too long Mugabe has piggybacked on the sentiments of those sympathetic...
...economic engine. "If you just take U.S. Sugar out of the mix and don't replace it with anything, it'll be catastrophic," said Antonio Perez, one of the town's four attorneys. Perez also grows cane that's sold to U.S. Sugar, and runs a private school on land donated by the company...
...here, and is not only the town's largest employer, but also the very hub of its economic and social life. Besides jobs, it has offered the town's wealthier residents, as well as private farmers, additional income by buying up the sugar cane they cultivate on their own land holdings. And it has bolstered the middle class by providing some financial aid and scholarships to college-bound children of employees. Employees, current and former, fill many local elected offices; the town's main road is Sugarland Highway, and U.S. Sugar built Cane Field Stadium at Clewiston High...
...earliest. And that gives the town and Hendry County time to create an alternative economic plan. Although there's much talk of expanding the region's industrial, commercial and tourism base, Clewiston Mayor Mali Chamness, a resident since 1963, is adamant that the focus must remain on the land: "Agriculture - that is our option. We're a farming community. We want to stay a farming community." Sugar employees, and the local businesses they sustain, will leave town unless a similar economy can be created, she said. "They've effectively devalued our county. We cannot be a viable community without agriculture...
...Couse, chairman and CEO of the First Bank of Clewiston, owns 500 acres of land on which he grows cane sold to U.S. Sugar. Not only is the fate of private growers like him now in limbo, but so are other plans: This week, a meeting was held to decide the fate of a planned $14 million expansion, including a new emergency room, planned for the town's 55-year-old hospital. But the local stakeholders decided to move ahead...