American tea-meisters now travel the world seeking the best-nurtured, hand-harvested, pesticide-free leaves of the tea plant.

NPR: Tea for You and Me

Every Japanese department store worth its hand-harvested sea salt will have its own depachika, some of which encompass several floors, and all of which are crammed with individual shops carrying a dizzying array of high-quality groceries.

BBC: The depachika of Tokyo

Most crops in the region are sown and harvested by hand, including the small plots that dot the gravity-challenging mountain sides, and farm machinery is a rare sight, with villagers using donkeys, oxen and bulls to plough the crops.

BBC: In Oaxaca, a community unchanged

Having harvested and germinated seeds from her hand pollinated plants, Minushika scored those seedlings for presence or absence of the red fleck and white V leaf marks and assayed for a specific genetic precursor and enzyme need for the production of hydrogen cyanide.

UNESCO: Outstanding Student Award - Realise the Dream

On the other hand, Cowen did not include on his list of low-hanging fruit harvested these past centuries the waves of financial and human capital that America attracted (and the rest of the world repelled).

FORBES: Tyler Cowen's Techno Slump