Free Republic

Wonder Marisa's first corn crop is tall and healthy, and early bolls of white fluff are already bursting in his sprawling cotton fields. "We drafted everybody in the family to put seeds in the ground," the new farmer remembered as he leaned on an ancient Yamaha motorbike on one of the pink-earth paths edging his 100-acre farm. "When I came here, I didn't know exactly how to farm, but I got good advice from the government. It's more work than I thought, but it's quite interesting." Marisa, 40, a former government civil servant, is one of the success stories of...