May 2007 | The Global Intelligencer

We are what we eat

by Cate Montana

ANYWHERE, North America - An enormous, pale cabbage nestles in the produce section at your local grocery store. Bloated with water soluable nitrogen fertilizer, it looks picture perfect. The fertilizer responsible for its size, ammonium nitrate, is used as the oxydizing agent to make explosives. In fact, terrorist groups often build cheap “fertilizer bombs.” Ammonium nitrate is the only “food” the cabbage ever gets.

The typical Western child is forced to digest vegetables, grains, and fruits raised on this mono-chemical diet. Along with all the highly processed derivatives, this is the only “food” the kid ever gets. Fast forward to the college years. Drug and alcohol use are high. Suicides are up, and campuses across America report a dramatic increase in students seeking one-on-one counseling. And then there is Virginia Tech. Think there might be a connection?

Microcredit - Banking for the poor

by Mary Avant

DHAKA, Bangladesh - In 1974, Professor Muhammad Yunus, head of the Rural Economics Program at the University of Chittagong, led his students on a field trip to a poor village. They talked to a woman who made bamboo stools, and learned that she borrowed around 25 cents to buy the raw bamboo for every stool she made. After repaying the middleman interest rates as high as 10% a week, she was left with less than a penny profit margin per stool. Had she been able to borrow at more advantageous rates, she would have been able to amass an economic cushion and raise herself above subsistence level.

That day Yunus and his students found 42 people in that one village who were in the same situation. "When I added up the total amount they needed," Yunus said, "I got the biggest shock of my life. It added up to 27 dollars! I felt ashamed of myself for being part of a society which could not provide even 27 dollars to 42 hard-working, skilled human beings."