Davos Newbies Home

Feeble  

I wouldn’t have expected Akamai to be as feeble as the New York Stock Exchange. While you might argue with Al Jazeera’s coverage of the war, independent media like the Qatar-based broadcaster is exactly what the Arab world needs.

Motherhood and apple pie 

We all know that China is the world’s factory. I didn’t know, however, that it was also becoming a force in agriculture. “There are so many apples in China — which over the last two decades turned itself into the world’s biggest apple grower — that the world price for apple juice concentrate has been depressed for nearly five years.”

I’ve long argued that the efforts of the rich north to prop up its agricultural industry are (to choose an appropriate word) fruitless. The developing world, including sub-Saharan Africa, can have a real comparative advantage in agriculture. Economic growth through agriculture for developing nations would be a benefit for the whole world.

There will continue to be opportunities for clever agriculture in the north. I like visiting the National Fruit Collection, where you can walk through orchards and see over 2,000 varieties of apple, over 500 varieties of pear and over 300 varieties of cherry. Some of them don’t taste very good, but huge numbers of them taste far better than the anodyne Red and Yellow Delicious (sic) that China seems to be majoring on.

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