Many General Motors manufacturing jobs has moved overseas. Photo: ifmuth (flickr)

Guess which media outlet is offering an insightful "We the People" series covering unemployment in the Midwest and other pressing U.S. election-year issues? The Kansas City Star? Perhaps the Chicago Tribune or the New York Times? Try Al Jazeera.

In "Jobs," the Dubai-based publisher examines how Dayton, Ohio is dealing with unemployment after losing more than 250,000 jobs in the last eight years. Dayton has been hit hard by outsourcing of manufacturing jobs, rising employment and increased home foreclosures. As one person put it, "the people are here but the jobs are not."

Watch part one of Jobs: End of the Line on YouTube

Watch part two of Jobs: End of the Line on YouTube

Photo: snowsoulmate (flickr)

A small farmer in Oaxaca, Mexico is spreading knowledge of ancient farming techniques to discourage citizens from abandoning their land.

The Mixteca highlands, where Jesús León Santos resides, is home to some of the most barren land in Mexico. However, in the last two decades, León and a group of farmers have worked to reclaim and reforest the land. Farmers are getting bigger yields a reason to stick around by adopting long-discarded farming techniques.

As the land has begun to produce again, Mr. León has reintroduced the traditional milpa, a plot where corn, climbing beans and squash grow together. The pre-Hispanic farming practice fixes nutrients in the soil and creates natural barriers to pests and disease.

Although the yields are tiny in comparison to mechanized, bulk-producing farms located elsewhere, they're enough to provide the option for people to remain on their own land — and in their own country.

Mexican farmers continue to abandon their land and migrate to the U.S., some because their soil is unproductive or they can no longer compete under Nafta. And those who remain face escalating global food prices. As one former Oaxacan farmer put it to AP, "Not only are farmers not growing food, but we are going hungry because we can't afford the foreign food that drove us off our farms."

León’s aspiration is to give options for a better life in Mexico itself. So far, his strategies have given some farmers an opportunity they haven't had in centuries.

For those of you interested in learning more about the Mixteca highlands and how farmers are implementing ancient agricultural practices, check out the book The Other Game: Lessons from How Life is Played in Mexican Villages.

The New York Times reports that despite concern over Nafta among Mexican farmers and U.S. big sugar companies, in time Nafta should make the U.S. consumer and the Mexican farmer better off.

Today, Business Week takes a look at how Mexico is benefiting under Nafta -- but why the free trade agreement hasn't solved all of Mexico's economic woes.

There's no question that the country has benefited greatly from Nafta: Mexico has become the world's 15th-largest exporter, sending abroad $272 billion of merchandise in 2007 ($43 billion of which was oil). It transformed a $3 billion trade deficit with the U.S. in 1993 into a $75 billion surplus in 2007. Mexico went on to sign free-trade agreements with 41 other countries, attracting some $223 billion of foreign investment in 15 years.

So, why did tens of thousands of angry Mexican farmers take to the streets in late January, demanding that Nafta be renegotiated? Because after a decade and a half of free trade, Mexico's economic transformation is incomplete, and many Mexicans are blaming Nafta for a plethora of problems that have more to do with bad government policies than with free trade.