They’ve also made the farm financially resilient with a wider effort to restore soil health, using carefully managed planting and grazing practices. In 1989, at the end of a four-year drought, grasshoppers wrecked soybean and small-grain crops all around them, but left the Jaus farm largely alone. Plant diversity had made their fields tougher forage than the neighbors’ one-crop plantings; also, it raised the sugar content of their grains, and therefore the alcohol potential, to a point of toxicity in the hoppers’ guts. Down in northwest Iowa, Jan Libbey and Tim Landgraf raise organic vegetables on 132 acres, some of it knobby terrain undesirable to your typical corn and soybean grower, who prefers the contours of a billiard table. They also raise chickens, which are pastured on clover planted as soil-enhancing cover; in return, the birds provide free fertilizer (and a second income stream from area consumers who choose them over the supermarket alternative). … [Read more...] about Farming as if nature still mattered: a new book offers encouraging examples
Reverse brain drain
Algeria’s state oil firm gets new management, targets brain drain
By Lamine Chikhi ALGIERS (Reuters) - The head of Algerian state oil firm Sonatrach has assembled a new leadership team, a senior company source said, aiming to reverse a flow of talent from an unwieldy state enterprise that keeps the country afloat. President Abdelaziz Bouteflika put U.S.-trained Abdelmoumen Ould Kaddour in charge of overhauling Sonatrach in March, 2017, after years of short-lived CEOs, fraud scandals and red tape had put foreign investors off the North African OPEC producer. The oil giant is an important source of energy for European states trying to reduce their dependence on Russia, and it funds a major part of the budget in a country where economic security helps prevent social turbulence. Jobs at Sonatrach are plentiful and sought-after, but, on a global scale, pay is low and depends on time served. "We have lost thousands of experienced and talented people mainly because we can't give them a salary they get now in the Gulf and other countries," Kaddour said in an … [Read more...] about Algeria’s state oil firm gets new management, targets brain drain
France, Germany push for EU funding for technology start-ups
BRUSSELS (Reuters) – France and Germany are pushing for an EU-wide initiative to fund innovation and research in tech start-up projects across the bloc so that Europe can compete more effectively against the likes of China and the United States. Europe has long been seen as a laggard in developing new technologies compared with the United States, which has a strong venture capital industry funding Silicon Valley start-ups. The more risk-averse culture in Europe has also been cited as an obstacle to creating a “European Google”, partly because failure can carry more stigma than it does across the Atlantic. Berlin and Paris called for the European Innovation Council to fund “ambitious” tech start-ups in a paper presented to European Union leaders at the Balkan summit last week. “A joint effort is also needed to further improve the venture capital environment and regulations to allow successful market transfer of breakthrough innovations, as well as … [Read more...] about France, Germany push for EU funding for technology start-ups
Greece’s new startup culture
By Karolina Tagaris and Lefteris Papadimas ATHENS/PATRAS, Greece (Reuters) – Greek student Stavros Tsompanidis was walking on a beach when he saw a business idea in the piles of dried-up seagrass. He decided to recycle it to make iPhone cases, sunglasses and gift boxes. Four years on, his startup, PHEE, sells its products across Greece and abroad. He represents a change in mindset among young Greeks who are turning to entrepreneurship as a result of the crisis. “If we don’t act, in the next five years we’ll be saying the same things: that Greece isn’t going well, that there are no jobs … that we have a new programme by the International Monetary Fund and European Union to support us,” the 25-year-old said. Greek startups are mushrooming in a financial crisis that started in 2008. The economy is only just recovering. It shrank by a quarter and cut off traditional routes to employment — jobs in government and family businesses. … [Read more...] about Greece’s new startup culture
Visit New Zealand to see Hobbiton, be flung downhill in a ball and walk around an active volcano
Please don’t call New Zealand paradise. The island country, like any, has its share of ills, from the highest teen suicide rate in the developed world to a brain drain that, for years, sucked many of its brightest away to places less remote — which would be just about anywhere. New Zealand, located in the southwestern Pacific Ocean, is far from everything, a fact that’s both its challenge and its treasure. That’s the message drilled into me by my college friend Kyle, a New York-reared writer who married a Kiwi and who managed a farm on the country’s north island. Countless travelers fantasize about New Zealand as a place untouched by much of the world’s bustle and strain. It has also greatly inflated the country’s tourist trade that it’s commonly seen, and actively promoted, as “Middle Earth,” courtesy of “The Lord of the Rings” movies filmed here, along with countless other … [Read more...] about Visit New Zealand to see Hobbiton, be flung downhill in a ball and walk around an active volcano