Word: westernness
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...optical firm, Carl Zeiss. But for the most part, eastern Germany is still far from resembling the "blossoming landscapes" that former Chancellor Helmut Kohl predicted back in 1990. True, living standards have soared thanks to the cash infusions, giving easterners more than 80% of the purchasing power of their western compatriots. But even two decades on, the region remains substantially less productive than its western counterpart. The former GDR has 20% of Germany's population but one-third of its unemployed...
...just how high expectations became on a quick tour of the Neustadt residential district on the western edge of Halle. Neustadt is a depressing example of Soviet-style urban planning, with row upon row of gray concrete blocks, built in the 1970s to house some of the 40,000 people who worked at the chemical factories that once dominated the local economy. Firms with names such as Buna and Leuna belched pollutants into Halle's air while churning out products whose quality lagged far behind western examples...
...stop in front of the ninth. Where the other plants towered sugar-cane thick with broad crisp blades, here the plants are skinny and stunted, draped with yellow-tinged leaves. The contrast is deliberate, an advertisement for the wares Odiambo sells from his roadside supply shop in western Kenya. While the shopkeeper's robust plots were planted with commercial seed and carefully nurtured with inorganic fertilizer, his sickly specimens are the result of seeds sown in the bare ground. "We wanted to have a control plot, to show the difference," he says...
...enlisting locals like Odiambo as free-market agriculture extension officers, training them in the proper use of seeds and chemical fertilizers. "The farmer will leave the shop with the product, and also the knowledge of how to use it," says Esborne Baraza, who coordinates AGRA's efforts in western Kenya...
...earth is contoured to reduce runoff and erosion. Spring onions serve as natural pest control. Legumes fix nitrogen to the soil. Cow manure produces biogas for the farm's stove. Farm owner Josephine Kizza says her project has introduced organic techniques to 180,000 Ugandan farmers. "In the Western countries, organic farming is expensive. But here in Africa, it is very cheap...