Suchergebnisse

In May 2023 I listened to two of Britain's most prominent political commentators, Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart, interviewing a former high-ranking government official, Jonathan Powell, for their Leading podcast—a spinoff from their highly successful podcast The Rest Is Politics. After thirty minutes, the subject of Iraq came up. All three had been closely involved in the 2003 invasion: Powell as chief of staff to then prime minister Tony Blair, and Campbell as Blair's director of communications and strategy. Both had been in the thick of policy- and decision-making at the highest level of government as Britain prepared for war. Stewart's experience had been utterly different; having completed a walking tour of north-central Afghanistan in 2002, he had served as deputy governor of two provinces in the marsh regions of southern raq, confronting the occupation's consequences and the ground truth of security, reconstruction, and peacebuilding in a country hollowed out by oppression, conflict, and now occupation.

Macadamia nuts were an important commodity among the Aborigines society in Australia where they originated. The nuts found use in medicine food cosmetics and gifts at feasting inter-tribal ceremonies. Due to their impact on the lives of the ordinary men the macadamias were then commercialized around 1930s in Hawaii. While Zimbabwe now boost of vast orchards of macadamias after their introduction in 1965 their contribution to the life of the ordinary Zimbabwean farmer is not known. As a result this paper sort to empirically investigate the impact of macadamia nuts farming on the lives of farmers in Zimbabwe so that the government and individuals who intend to consider growing the crop make an informed decision. Data set captured from 128 macadamia farmers through a questionnaire was used in the study. Proceeds realized from macadamia nut orchards have enabled the majority of farmers to prepare a better future for their children adequately provide food for the family build decent homes afford to pay family policies plough back in the orchards through infrastructure development and reinvest in other income generating projects. This study concludes that macadamia nuts farming is very sustainable and has proved to be a game changer in the lives of the ordinary farmers in Zimbabwe. The study thus recommend government to improve its support for the sector and to encourage farmers to invest money realized from macadamia nuts in order to have a fallback position.

"Standard economic growth models generally consider different factors of production such as land, capital, labour, technology and human capital. These are common in theoretical models and empirical applications but more evidence is still needed for their long-term regional evolution. Therefore, this paper traces the evolution of specific aspects of these factors in the European regions and cities by means of different proxies. The data have been collected and calculated from a wide range of diverse historical and spatial data bases. A particular feature is the definition of the European regions according to the NUTS classification by the European Union. Thus, the paper gives a rough outline of some of the most important long-term regional tendencies that should be taken into account in research directed to past and recent time periods." (author's abstract)