THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 5, 2012
PAGE 3
NEWS OF THE WORLD
Associated Press
SOUTH AMERICA
ASSOCIATED PRESS
A worker shows a handful of dried cacao seeds at a cacao plantation in Cano Rico, Venezuela, on Nov. 15. Cacao pods that ripen in the forest-shaded plantations of Venezuela are transformed into some of the world's finest chocolate.
Chocolate 'king' thrives despite state control
CANO RICO, Venezuela— Cacao pods ripen to colors from bright yellow to crimson in the forest-shaded plantations of Venezuela, where some of the world's finest chocolate is born.
The crop is transformed into gourmet bars that sell briskly in Venezuela and are exported to the United States, Europe and Japan by the country's premier chocolate maker, Chocolates El Rey, or The King. As the company has won success and international acclaim, though, it has also had to cope with difficulties brought on by President Hugo Chavez's socialist government.
El Rey's growing business illustrates how some entrepreneurs are managing to hold or and even thrive in Venezuela despite more government regulations and state takeovers of companies and farmland. Producers of crops such as coffee and sugar have struggled in the face of price controls and cheap imports.
El Rey used to go through just four bureaucratic steps to export its chocolate. Now, owner Jorge Redmond says the list of requirements has grown to more than 50.
optimistic about cacao and plans new investments to increase output at the company's plant, which is already churning out 3,000 tons of chocolate a year. El Rey has a workforce of more than 200 employees, and plans to increase its exports.
"We're going to stay here and fight it out. We're not giving up. And I think most other companies are going to do the same," said Redmond, who has been leading El Rey for nearly four decades as its majority owner and president. "You have to keep working. My philosophy is that we're going to last longer than the government."
Chavez, for his part, has talked about harnessing Venezuela's potential in cacao and increasing exports. His government has already established the Venezuelan Cacao Socialist Corporation, which has invested in several processing plants.
Redmond said officials from the state company explained in a private meeting with buyers in November that the company plans to buy about 2,000 tons directly from growers in the region of Barlovento, east of Caracas, and then divvy it up in the industry.
"We were very clear ... that we're
only going to buy what suits us." Redmond said at his office in Caracas, which is decorated with wooden cacao pods and smells of chocolate.
Redmond's company has found a winning strategy by paying more for quality cacao, providing assistance to small farmers and marketing its chocolate in Venezuela and around the world.
Some of the aromatic cacao comes from independent farmers in Barlovento, where the lush coastal forests sprout with moss and bromeliads along with peasized cacao blossoms.
Lifelong grower Pablo Planchar said he is thankful to El Rey for the higher prices it pays for each burlap sack of cacao. He's also grateful that the company has provided equipment for pruning trees and special boxes made of apamate wood where he ferments his cacao.
The cacao is then spread out and raked on a concrete patio for sundrying, where a sliding metal roof installed by El Rey helps keep the crop dry when it rains.
"It's the institution that has helped us the most," Planchar said of the company.
AFRICA
Study: lion population dropped 75 percent in past 50 years
JOHANNESBURG — The lions that roam Africa's savannahs have lost as much as 75 percent of their habitat in the last 50 years as humans overtake their land and the lion population dwindles, said a study released Tuesday.
Researchers at Duke University, including prominent conservationist Stuart Pimm, warn that the number of lions across the continent have dropped to as few as 32,000, with populations in West Africa under incredible pressure.
likely lost their lions since a 2002 study was run, the report said. Only nine countries contain at least 1,000 lions, while Tanzania alone has more than 40 percent of the continent's lions, it said.
Fifty years ago, nearly 100,000 lions roamed across the African continent. In recent years, however, an ever-growing human population has come into the savannah lands to settle and develop. That has both cut down the amount of land lions have to roam, as well as fragmented it, researchers said.
"Lion numbers have declined precipitously in the last century," the study, published Tuesday by the journal Biodiversity and Conservation, reads. "Given that many now live in small, isolated populations, this trend will continue. The situation in West Africa is particularly dire, with no large population remaining and lions now absent from many of the region's national parks."
"An obvious caveat is that areas for which we detect little conversion of savannahs to croplands may still suffer human impacts that make them unsuitable for lions," the report said. "Over-hunting for trophies, poaching — of lions and of their prey species — and conflict with pastoralists may not have any visual signal to satellites. Even where there are low human population densities and areas designated as national parks, there (may) not be lions within them."
Using satellite imagery, the researchers determined the amount of land now available for lions that remains wild and minimally impacted by human growth. Those lands are rapidly diminishing, and more territory will likely be lost in the next 40 years, the report said.
Five countries in Africa have
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Lions relax at the Lion Park in Camperdown, near Durban, South Africa on June 20. The lions that roam Africa's savannahs have lost as much as 75 percent of their habitat in the last 50 years as humans overtake their land.
15 minutes from the KU campus
Add HCC to your class schedule and save. Just a short commute from the University of Kansas campus We have what you need!
www.highlandcc.edu
Smaller class sizes lower Cost per class credits Transfer easily
Highland Community College Perry Center 203 West Bridge St., Perry, KS (785)597-0127
Highland Community College Campus
606 W. Main, Highland, KS
(785)442-6000
For more information about HCC Online courses, please call (785) 442-6129
---