NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

So much to read, so little time?but these activities are definitely worth a look-over.

Berni Labs – Distributing “Bug Balancer” Pest repellant for farmers
Jorge Berni, a longtime resident of the agriculture-dependent community in Los Mochis, Mexico, was convinced that farmers needed a safer solution for crop control than the heavily toxic pesticides upon which they had relied. Berni combined his training in chemical engineering with his twenty years of experience as an organic farmer to produce Bug Balancer, a chemical solution that serves to repel harmful pests that destroy farmers? crops while attracting beneficial insects that are the natural predators of those pests.

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Coffee Coops in Rwanda
Rwanda, a tiny East African country recently rent by a famously savage civil war, has found hope in that most colonial of crops: coffee. By riding booming demand in the developed world for specialty brews–and, to a certain extent, by turning its own challenges to its advantage–Rwanda has made premium coffee-growing a national priority. That has not only brought in a trickle of money to a country with little else to trade, but provided a stage on which one-time blood enemies can reconcile their terrible history.

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Jiangyou Xun Pai Organic Agriculture Company
Mr. Yan Jingyu, owner of Jiangyou Xun Pai Organic Agriculture Co., had a dream of making organic agriculture a common practice in his native Sichuan province is one that he has been cultivating since he began harvesting the first Damascus rose in 1969. Since then, Yan has not only worked to convert degraded soil into productive land, he has become an entrepreneurial trendsetter by bringing organic practices to the farmers of rural China. As Xun Pai begins to work with international buyers, the company’s quality standards and scalable methods are likely to spread throughout the regional agricultural sector.

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Medicine Shoppe India–High-Quality Rural Health Centers
Medicine Shoppe India, the second largest pharmacy chain in India, is establishing health centers in rural India aimed at providing high quality yet affordable health services for poor and marginalized rural consumers. In addition, Medicine Shoppe India has innovated a new store format where health services would be offered at no cost, but medicine or other pharmacy products would be sold at affordable prices. To build awareness of their products and services at the village level, Medicine Shoppe India hopes to partner with one or more rural ICT network orchestrators.

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Vegetable Oil as Car Fuel
Capetonian Roy Dibley runs his 1980s diesel Mercedes on used vegetable oil, collecting it from restaurants in and around Cape Town. Dibley is a qualified mechanical engineer who designs, builds and sells conversion kits for diesel engines to run on vegetable oil (after filtering) – used, or neat, straight out of the bottle. The kits, which have been extensively tested in South Africa, are now available from Dibley, and he hopes they will prove a boon to farmers large and small, to operators of hotel courtesy buses and, as he puts it, small operators like plumbers and electricians.

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