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Value Chains

The curse on gum arabic in Sudan

Gum arabic is a little ingredient with a big footprint in food and medicine around the world. Despite high demand, its producers face an incredible spread of challenges.

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Value Chains

Pomegranates vs Poppies: Building food markets to fight the drug trade

The crops used to produce most of the world's illegal drugs come from a small number of weak states. Can providing impoverished farmers there with alternative crops -- and the markets to sell them in -- undermine the drug trade?

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Value Chains

Woodblock Chocolate: From bean to bar, putting farmers first

An Oregon chocolate maker's story: how the company builds value from bean to bar.

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Global Ideas News Brief: Financing coffee + The Pope's capitalism commentary

Financing coffee, developing countries' thirst for energy and the Pope's capitalism. Staff Picks: What we're reading this week.

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Social Enterprise

India Cries Tears of Joy for Groupon’s Onions

Onion prices have reached record highs in India. But an unlikely savior stepped into the crisis: Groupon, offering a kilogram of onions per person at a fraction of the market rate.

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Value Chains

Addictive supply chains: Why Nestle can’t quit child labor

Multinational corporations can seem like alcoholics--they promise to reform, be responsible and end labor abuse--but in the end, quitting is harder than it appears.

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Value Chains

T-shirts, technology and trade: Planet Money host says experimentation, not theory, key to cutting poverty

Making t-shirts can help lift a country out of poverty, but t-shirts alone no longer cut it, according to economic journalist Adam Davidson.

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Sustainable Energy

The fortune at the bottom of the ocean: Mozambique’s looming natural gas boom

The solution to Mozambique’s long-standing economic woes might lurk beneath the Indian Ocean’s rocky sea floor.

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Sustainable Energy

Sun, wind and water: Brazil's ingredients for the best beaches--and alternative energy

Brazil, the third largest consumer of electricity in the Western Hemisphere, is on the brink of energy independence.

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Value Chains

Help a Bolivian farmer: Eat quinoa

Andean farmers have enjoyed an economic bonanza from growing quinoa. But the farmers' success may prove their undoing, as farmers in the United States and Canada have begun growing the grain.

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Value Chains

Free trade between the U.S. and EU could change the dynamic of value chains in Africa

A free trade agreement between the U.S. and EU could provide a much needed economic boost, but not for banana farmers in Ghana.

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Value Chains

Interview: Helping coffee farmers turns competitors into colleagues

We talk with Green Mountain Coffee about their new hunger-busting coalition with Starbucks, Counter Culture, Farmer Brothers, S&D Coffee, and Sustainable Harvest.

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Social Enterprise

How to sell Big Macs in India: A lesson for social entrepreneurs

Social enterprises often takes their cues from venture capital, but a recent article at Co.Exist claims there is a lot to learn from the big, bad transnational corporations as well.

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Value Chains

Two companies making trade fairer without 'fair trade'

When fair trade farming didn’t pay enough for one farmer to make ends meet, he started a new coffee company to take control of the production process and boost profits.

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Social Enterprise

Africa is finally booming, but don’t break out the champagne yet

Africans are celebrating levels of economic growth and political stability that were unthinkable just 10 years ago, but without the appropriate economic and political reforms, the continent could quickly relapse.