Small farmers in the hills of Honduras are improving their lives through seed saving and on-farm experimentation. Jen Moore reports.
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Afghanistan produces ninety percent of the world’s heroin. The illegal drug accounts for about half the country’s gross domestic product. The Canadian and U.S. governments, along with major media, say the Taliban controls this drug trade. The reality is quite different, as investigative journalist Reese Erlich reports from Jalalabad, near the Pakistan border.
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Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley has produced wine for over four thousand years. That winemaking tradition continues today, with Lebanon boasting some world-class reds. But wine making isn’t easy in Lebanon. Vintners have had to deal with fundamentalists, civil war, and invading armies. The struggle has been worth it. Reese Erlich reports from the Bekaa Valley.
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Southern Lebanese farmers are caught between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand, their land has been a battleground and Israeli cluster bombs continue to pollute their fields. On the other hand, they’ve been abandoned by Lebanon’s political elite – many of them merchants – who prefer to see Lebanon import its food. A guy named Rami is helping them out.
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By its very nature, water can only be successfully managed by consensus. It flows from one place to the next, often in a meandering way, blind to human demands and arbitrary boundaries. Conflicts often arise, smart solutions typically the exception, rather than the rule. Nowhere are water issues more a propos than in the landlocked South American nation of Bolivia.
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Here’s another dispatch from Victoria Fenner, who spent an action and learning-filled three weeks in Central America earlier in the year. It’s hard to visit Central America and not explore the world of coffee, so here we go.
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Of all the conflicts in Latin America, none was more brutal or costly in human lives than the forty-year civil war in Guatemala. Two hundred thousand people died, most of them impoverished peasants of Mayan ancestry. Today, former rebels are presenting their perspective of the struggle–to tourists.
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The slow-food movement has reached dizzying heights on the sun-baked altiplano of Bolivia, in the Andean highlands. Here, small-scale producers are making the most of scarce water supplies, ample sun, a few inexpensive materials and local expertise to eke out a living in some of the highest elevation farmland in the world.
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GPM producer Victoria Fenner has recently returned from a trip to Central America. In Honduras, she spent a few days on the side of a big mountain, gazing down on clouds soaked with rain. On the bottom of Panacam’s slopes farming communities depend on her fresh waters and are trying to keep them clean. Here’s Victoria’s story.
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Think about resources crucial to human survival. What comes to mind? Fresh, clean water for sure. Food tops the list. Earth’s primary living products – plants that grow from seeds – are the foundation of humanity’s food supply. Wheat, barley, oats, corn, potatoes and a dizzying variety of beans and legumes … Conserving these seeds of survival – as a common resource – is one of humanity’s greatest challenges … Never more so than in the age of global climate change and plant disease pandemics.
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Three quarters of Earth’s surface is covered in water. Most of this vast mass of water is salty, a mere two percent or so fit to drink. Underground is where the planet’s purest waters lie. You’d think we’d conserve what’s so scarce and valuable. It isn’t always so. Bolivians are working hard to better manage their water – as Jen Moore reports.
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Farmers and their cash crops … earning a living on the margins of global agriculture. Palestinian farmers face an entirely unique challenge. Israel’s so-called “Security Barrier” has actually walled them off from their olive and vegetable groves. The Annexation Wall – as Palestinians call it – prevents them from farming completely.
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Rwanda … Land of a Thousand Hills, in east-central Africa. Fourteen years after the awful 100-day genocide, Rwandans grow rice, bananas, tea and coffee as they have for generations. On one mountainside, villagers are earning extra money processing their own coffee beans — thanks to a fellow Rwandan educated in Canada.
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The next time you buy roses for your honey, consider this: The cut flowers in your Valentine’s bouquet were fumigated for insects and mildew, then drenched with preservatives for the long flight north. They may only make your lover sneeze – or perhaps break out in a rash – but the farmers who grow the flowers may suffer chronic poisoning. GPM producer Jen Moore sends us this report from Ecuador, a major exporter of cut flowers.
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In the foothills of the Himalayan Mountains – in northern India – a very energetic woman has declared that seeds should also be free! Her name is Vandana Shiva, and she’s a tireless defender of farmers rights. GPM producer Dave Kattenburg caught up with Vandana Shiva at her biodiversity farm north just outside Dehradun. Click on read more, then on the audio button beneath her photo to hear their conversation.
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Few industries provoke as much controversy as mining. When powerful companies seek out concessions in poor countries, communities rally around democratic institutions to defend their land and water. From the Andean mountains of Peru, Jen Moore brings us this story about how a democratic vote saved the day … perhaps.
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Isabel La Torre knew they’d finally hit upon the right idea when women’s participation in the Central Coffee Organization of Northwestern Peru (CECANOR) more than doubled in less than three years. For more than three decades, this vibrant Peruvian coffee marketer has been interested in addressing gender inequity on the farm. But after various attempts, putting a dollar value on women’s work is what has made a difference.
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