Word: plant
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...first film, 1989's Roger & Me. It starts with home movies of the child Mike and his blue-collar family in their hometown of Flint, Mich., and follows the adult Mike as he stalks General Motors chairman Roger Smith in the hopes of confronting Smith for closing the auto plant in Flint and turning the city into a Hooverville. Along with critical praise, Moore earned charges of twisting the facts and distorting the sequence of events. Either way, the movie made him famous...
...amphetamines. The top estimate is that no less than 90% of men in Yemen and 25% of women chew the leaves, storing a wad in one cheek as it slowly breaks down and enters the bloodstream. Astonishingly, most of the country's arable land is devoted to the plant, which accounts for approximately a third of the country's water usage. And Yemen has very little water to begin with; almost all of it comes from underground aquifers filled thousands of years ago and replenished only very slowly. Experts predict that Sana'a, a city of almost 2 million, could...
...none of those promises came to be. "It was a combination of international hype and local organizations who were ... selling seeds at very high prices claiming that they were special certified seeds when really they were just seeds collected from old trees in the wild," Newman says. The plants also did not do well in arid conditions. "[The plant] was more fragile, especially in its initial establishment phase, than we thought," says Jan Van den Abeele, executive director for Better Globe Forestry, a Nairobi-based group that studies optimal conditions for planting trees in dry areas. And many farmers...
...Farmers in Kibwezi quickly realized that they would have to throw out the rulebook to make their crops grow. Boniface Muoki's jatropha plants look like they're doing well - they're covered with thick green leaves and fruit. But Muoki says he did almost nothing the government experts told him to Do - instead, he planted the seedlings in meter-deep holes so that they would collect more rainwater and he tends the plants fastidiously. "It's the farmer who knows best," Muoki says. "At this point, I know more about jatropha than most anyone because...
...problems haven't discouraged other jatropha proponents, either. For several years, Titus Kisavi traveled the region encouraging farmers to grow the plant, earning a commission from development groups for the seeds he sold. These days, however, he doesn't have a job and he spends his afternoons at a bar near Kibwezi. Still, he hasn't given up on the plant. "I have a very big passion for jatropha," Kisavi said. "I visit farmers and tell them to plant it in the hope that one day ... somebody will come to the farms and sign contracts for the seed. We know...