“Like a burned-over longleaf pine, we can come back from this recession
greener than ever, if we choose wisely.”
Here is my response to
James R. Wright’s questions about jobs and priorities. -jsq
It’s an opportunity for those of us who are not currently
searching for our next meal to help those who need jobs,
and thereby to help ourselves, so they don’t turn to crime.
Like a burned-over longleaf pine, we can come back from this recession
greener than ever, if we choose wisely.
Switchgrass seemed like a good idea five or ten years ago,
but there is still no market for it.
Meanwhile, local and organic agriculture is booming,
and
continued to boom right through the recession.
Not just strictly organic by Georgia’s ridiculously
restrictive standards for that, but also less pesticides
for healthier foods, pioneered as nearby as Tifton.
That’s two markets: one for farmers, stores, and farmers’ markets
in growing and distributing healthy food, and one for local
banks in financing farmers converting from their overlarge
pesticide spraying machinery to plows and cultivators.
Similarly, biomass may have seemed like a good idea years ago,
but with Adage backing out of both of its Florida biomass plants
just across the state line, having never built any such plant ever,
the biomass boom never happened.
Meanwhile, our own Wesley Langdale has demonstrated to the state
that
Continue reading → …the nexus between sustainability and job creation. Every now and then, perhaps once in a generation, there presents itself a moment, an opportunity, for those cities that are willing to seize it, to truly benefit the region for generations to come.