Word: soiled
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Dates: during 2000-2000
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...Dutchman eventually tracked down his marmosets to a black-water branch of the Amazon, 200 miles southeast of Manaus. A farmer pointed toward the edge of the forest, where five marmosets happily snacked on the resin of a morototo tree. On later visits, Van Roosmalen noticed that the soil of this farm was 3 1/2 ft. deep and richer than any he knew of in the Amazon, where the earth is sandy and gives out after a couple of years, forcing farmers to raze hundreds of square miles of rain forest every year...
Intrigued, he found other patches of this black earth elsewhere in the Amazon. Mixed into this loamish soil was evidence of prehistoric man: charcoal, occasional stone axheads made from meteorites, and a lump of manioc bread preserved in natural tree gum. "If we can find out how these so-called primitives made this soil," reckons Van Roosmalen, "we can use it as an alternative to destructive slash-and-burn agriculture." Unfortunately, since the river tribes that knew the secret were all wiped out by European raiding parties 500 years ago, the scientist must start from scratch...
Protected banana production, that is. Most of the bananas were grown on small family farms and tilled by hand on hilly terrain and poor soil, with little or no mechanization or irrigation. Yields were far below those in places like Honduras, Guatemala and Ecuador. In fact, the cost of growing bananas in the Caribbean was twice that for bananas produced on Latin American plantations. Without their favorable entree to Europe, the banana industries of these small islands might have disappeared...
...turn a profit. The little girl who wanted to be a farmer has finally grown up, and it's only fitting that the grapes that made her dream come true are late-ripening Cabernet, which, she points out, improve with time. The difficult mountainside growing conditions and rocky soil only enhance their quality. "They say grapes that struggle are like the human character," says Chu. "They're better." Her advice to other folks: "Find out all you can, then just do it. Start in a small way, and keep working...
...world at the click of a Send button, this ubiquity says more about the diffuse nature of his operations. U.S. investigators were reported Thursday to have uncovered links between Bin Laden and the bomb plot foiled last December by the arrest of a number of Algerian militants on U.S. soil. The suspected head of the Canada-based Algerian group was arrested recently in Senegal, at Washington's request, pending formal charges. Investigators say Mohambedou Ould Slahi also happens to be the brother-in-law of one of Bin Laden's key lieutenants. And the roommate of one of the Algerians...