Plantations

In the eyes of Swedish documentary filmmaker Fredrik Gertten, his documentary "Bananas!" is a balanced, nuanced depiction of a trial pitting Nicaraguan banana plantation workers and a prominent L.A. attorney against a powerful multinational agribusiness. "It is a classical David-Goliath story," the director said in a phone interview last week. In the eyes of Dole Food Co.

The crop that defined Hawaiian agriculture for more than a century vanished this year from the islands of Oahu and Hawaii as workers hauled in their final harvests of sugar cane. For those who had spent a lifetime on the plantations, saying goodbye to sugar was like losing a relative. The pain continues to show in the high unemployment figures in rural areas. But a silver lining is beginning to glint through the gloom.

From my position inside the gazebo, I can see the wide, gentle contours of the James River curve past emerald fields dotted with sheep. Behind me, the stately Georgian manor house of Berkeley plantation stands silent watch. Late summer's heavy heat has settled a certain quiet upon the river valley and a lull has fallen over my conversation with Mack Jamieson, the 80-something owner of this historic estate.

Growing up on his family's sugar plantation, Leontino Balbo slept like a dream. The hard work, fresh air and lullaby of the sugar mill's machinery brought him peace. Years later, the place would keep Balbo up at night. After becoming agricultural director of the farm, Balbo took a giant risk. He threw away things his family had learned. He embraced things his family had forgotten.

There are positions open for slaves at the Bratton plantation. Applicants must be willing to pick cotton, drink the master's liquor, gossip, sing spirituals, mourn the dead. The job is unpaid. Starts immediately. Since last summer, when four African American "living history" volunteers raised complaints about scripts they were asked to read, managers at Historic Brattonsville, a museum and historic site, have been coping with the most awkward of personnel issues.

The South holds plenty of untold stories. One of them is that Margaret Mitchell wrote almost all of "Gone With the Wind," and conjured up the world's most famous plantation house, while dwelling in a cramped apartment on the ground floor of an 1899 Tudor-style urban Atlanta home. She called it "The Dump."

Residents in the heart of California's marijuana-growing region, angered at pot raiders' tactics during "Operation Greensweep" nearly a decade ago, are gathering for an unusual public hearing to advise drug agents on future raids. Organizers of the two-day event, complete with a court reporter to provide a stenographic record and a retired appellate judge with the authority to issue findings, want residents to have a say in a new handbook that authorities are writing to govern agents' conduct.

Known primarily in export circles for producing huge volumes of computer monitors, heavy trucks and vegetable crops, this booming border town will soon have another claim to fame: olive oil. Baja California's cheap land, low wages, suitable growing conditions and proximity to the U.S. market have lured Italian and Spanish agribusinesses that have committed to plant up to 17,000 acres of olive orchards on farmland in and around this state capital, Mexican officials say.

A statewide campaign to eradicate marijuana plantations seized a record number of plants this year, as Mexican drug cartels have increasingly taken over cultivation in California and created larger and more sophisticated farms, officials announced Wednesday. At a news conference at the Angeles National Forest headquarters in Arcadia, state Atty. Gen.