Guizhou in Southwest China is determined to cultivate its tea sector into a
pillar industry by accelerating the development of the tea gardens, said Wang
Fuyu, deputy secretary of the provincial committee of the Communist Party of
China.

As part of its efforts, the province has issued a set of
Suggestions on Accelerating the Development of the Tea Industry this year to
help build the province into a high quality green tea raw material base, a
processing center as well as an important production base for green food tea and
organic tea, Wang said.

According to Wang, the province boasts great
potential for the development of the tea industry.

A survey has shown
that Guizhou has about 7.5 million mu (15 mu=1 hectare) of land suitable for
growing tea. Currently, the province only has an accumulated tea garden area of
1.2 million mu. This indicates that 84 percent of the province's likely tea
cultivation area is yet to be utilized.

"We have planned to develop an
accumulated area of 5 million mu of tea gardens by the year 2020," said Wang.


To this end, Guizhou will build 400,000 mu of new tea gardens every year
during the 11th Five-Year Plan period (2006-10). During the 12th Five-Year Plan
period (2011-15), the province will add 200,000 mu of tea gardens every year,
while between 2016 and 2020, another 200,000 mu of tea gardens will be created
annually.

With these measures, Guizhou plans to forge itself into a
leading tea industry province in China in terms of production scale, quality and
brand image, Wang said.

"To meet the goal, the province will both
mobilize rural households to set up new tea gardens and guide companies to
develop tea farms."

To speed up the process of building tea gardens in
Guizhou, it expects various enterprises to help carry out its ambitious plans by
introducing their capital, talent and technologies.

Guizhou currently
has 800,000 mu of tea gardens with normal production capability. These gardens
mainly rely on plucking spring tea and processing it. Summer and autumn are
slack seasons for tea farmers when the tea harvest rate is less than 60 percent.


In 2006, the province had 1.14 million mu under tea cultivation. Total
output of tea leaf was 24,000 tons with an output value of 650 million yuan. The
figure shows a production rate of only 600 yuan per mu, far less than the
national average of 1,140 yuan.

These statistics indicate that if the
province wants to reach the country's average level, its output should be
doubled, whereas it will have to increase production even further if it wants to
reach the level of other leading tea producing provinces.

Broader market


Guizhou also has great potential for in-depth tea leaf processing. In
recent years, domestic and international companies such as Wahaha, Coca-Cola
and Nestle have entered the tea market. The tea-related drinks market is
growing at a speed of more than 10 percent annually, blazing a new path for
medium and low-grade tea leaves.

Elements extracted from tea leaf such
as tea pigment and polyphenol are widely affecting people's lives. Products
themed on tea such as toothpaste, soap and shampoo have won favor from
consumers. Medicines and healthcare products made from tea polyphenols are also
gradually gaining recognition. A new consumption trend favoring oil, tea powder,
tea cakes, tea candy and tea food products is taking shape.

Guizhou
offers unlimited opportunities for business in the tea sector, as in-depth
processing of tea is yet to be fully developed there.

Investing in the
tea industry in Guizhou will mean reaping the benefits of a long tea picking
season, low labor costs and low coal and power prices. Tea leaves can be plucked
for seven months in the province, with 40 to 50 days suitable for such harvest
during spring, compared with only 10 to 20 days in many other places.


Guizhou's tea gardens usually close in late September and early October,
some even going on till late December. This means tea farm work can be carried
out almost all year round.

The province's low labor costs are also a
chief draw, as it accounts for between 40 and 50 percent of the production cost
of tea in the province. The average price of rural labor force in Guizhou is
about 40 percent lower than that in the central and eastern regions of the
country.

The province boasts the most abundant coal and power generation
resources among China's tea-producing provinces. The price of coal is between
300 to 400 yuan per ton and the price of electricity is 0.5 yuan per
kilowatt-hour compared with 700 to 800 yuan per ton and 0.8 yuan per
kilowatt-hour respectively

Is Nike a better shoe than Reebok? Is Michelin a better tire than Goodyear?
Who really knows?

Sure, each brand has their loyalists, and if you ask
the executives at Nike and Michelin, I suspect they'd have reams of data to
prove that their products are the best. But to the average shoe or tire buyer,
are Nike and Michelin all that different from the competition?

If you
took all the brand indicators off both products, would you know which is made of
longer-lasting material or offers better performance? In all likelihood, you
wouldn't.

If that's the case, why are people like you and me willing to
spend more for products from companies like Nike and Michelin? The answer, in a
word, is branding. These marketers know that the huge investment of time and
money they spend on their brands will make their products worth more in the
marketplace. And they're right.

In BusinessWeek/Interbrand's 2007
ranking of the 100 Best Global Brands [BusinessWeek.com 08/06/07], the global
value of the Coca-Cola brand was $65 billion. That's the brand alone -- not the
trucks, not the bottling plants, not even the secret formula.

The
same study says that the McDonald's brand is worth $29 billion, and BMW $21
billion.

Dead Man Walking

(Editor's note: See two other posts in series, "Carless
in Seattle," and "A
Mile From Home.")

Transit and walking are time consuming. Most people are just too busy. That’s
obvious, right?

Well, as my family begins the ninth week of its experiment
in
car-less living, I’m finding a few flaws in that logic. Here are two.

1. Time spent on transit is different from time spent driving. People vary,
of course, but for me, transit time is a pure gain over driving. I don’t enjoy
driving. I’d rather read than listen to music or talk radio. And I can read
without queasiness on all forms of transit. For me, then, car time is a waste of
life, but transit time is living, and I’ll happily choose a 30 minute transit
trip over a 15 minute car trip. For me, driving is time consuming.

2. Just so, walking doesn’t consume time, for different reasons. In fact,
walking creates time. For one thing, if you walk for transportation, you don’t
have to go to the gym as often.

Bottle Battle

About yesterday's
post on glass recycling -- some astute readers noticed that by focusing on
recycling, I'd ignored more important priorities:  reducing the
use of packaging, and reusing glass bottles where practical. 
That's a fair enough critique.  But it did make me wonder:  what
happened, exactly, to the practice of reusing glass bottles?  I can still
remember drinking Coke from reusable bottles as a kid, but I rarely see that
anymore. How come? And, more to the point, how would a system of reusable glass
bottles stack up against recyclable glass and plastic containers?

On the first question -- what happened to reusable bottles? -- there's this
recent
article that sums up the situation nicely.  In a nutshell:

Better Than Corn? Algae Set to Beat Out Other Biofuel Feedstocks

WorldChanging
Team
October 13, 2007 5:51 AM

From Worm Poop to Wal-Mart

Investors seek alternative investments addressing social &
environmental issues

(CSRwire) October 9, 2007 - In 2001, Tom
Szaky had a crazy idea to turn worm poop into plant food and package it in used
soda bottles. And it worked. 6 years later, TerraCycle employs over 30 workers
in their 20,000 square foot Trenton, NJ plant and they have a 2007 sales goal of
well over $5 million. This year they are selling 9 products in many major,
nationwide retailers, including Target, Wal-Mart, The Home Depot, Whole Foods
and others. Tom and TerraCycle have been featured everywhere from the Evening
News with Dan Rather to the cover of Inc. Magazine.

TerraCycle got to
this point with well over $4 million in angel investments and some of that
investment came from a group called Investors' Circle, a nationwide network of
investors who use private capital to promote the transition to a sustainable
economy. TerraCycle's CEO, Tom Szaky said, "I owe endless gratitude to
Investor's Circle. Without their programs and investors my young company may not
have survived. They are probably the only investor group that focuses entirely
on environmental and socially beneficial companies. They realize that there is
much more to a company then a bottom line and a profit margin."


Investors' Circle hosts two venture fairs a year where companies like
TerraCycle, who address a social or environmental issue, present to over 150
investors who are looking for socially responsible investments. Over the past 15
years, Investors' Circle members have invested over $112 million in 183 deals.

press release

CARBON DISCLOSURE PROJECT AND CADBURY
SCHWEPPES ANNOUNCE SUPPLY CHAIN INITIATIVE COLLABORATION
09 Oct
07

Marion Nestle - "The Ethics of Food Marketing"

Marion Nestle is the Paulette
Goddard Professor of Nutrition, Food Studies, and Public Health at New York
University, in the department that she chaired from 1988 through 2003. She
also holds appointments as Professor of Sociology in NYU's College of Arts and
Sciences and as a Visiting Professor of Nutritional Sciences in the College of
Agriculture at Cornell University. Her degrees include a Ph.D. in molecular
biology and an M.P.H. in public health nutrition, both from the University of
California, Berkeley. Her research focuses on the politics of food with an
emphasis on the role of food marketing as a determinant of dietary choice. She
is the author of "Food Politics: How the
Food Industry Influences Nutrition and Health" (University of California
Press, 2002) and "Safe Food: Bacteria, Biotechnology, and Bioterrorism"
(University of California Press, 2003), and is co-editor of "Taking Sides:
Clashing Views on Controversial Issues in Food and Nutrition"
(McGraw-Hill/Dushkin, 2004). Her new book, "What to Eat," was published in May,
2006.

In November 2006, Princeton University hosted a 5-part
conference, exploring the broad and compelling issues and ethical dilemmas
surrounding food production in the U.S. and the choices individuals make
regarding the food they eat. Marion Nestle was invited to speak on "The Ethics
of Food Marketing". We hear segments from her presentation.

Where the Wild Things Are Now: Domestication Reconsidered
edited by Rebecca Cassidy (Goldsmith College, London, UK) and Molly
Mullin (Albion College, USA)

Domestication has often seemed a matter of the distant past, a series of
distinct events involving humans and other species that took place long ago.
Today, as genetic manipulation continues to break new barriers in scientific and
medical research, we appear to be entering an age of biological control. Are we
also writing a new chapter in the history of domestication?

Where the Wild Things Are Now explores the relevance of domestication
for anthropologists and scholars in related fields who are concerned with
understanding ongoing change in processes affecting humans as well as other
species.

From the pet food industry and its critics to salmon farming in Tasmania, the
protection of endangered species in Vietnam and the pigeon fanciers who
influenced Darwin, Where the Wild Things Are Now provides an urgently
needed re-examination of the concept of domestication against the shifting
background of relationships among humans, animals and plants.

For the complete list and detailed information about all the symposium
volumes and a full table of contents for this volume click
here

Wharton
Leadership Ventures:

Kilimanjaro Climb and Safari

A Leadership and
Teamwork Experience on Africa’s Highest Mountain