{"id":322,"date":"2012-11-18T11:05:58","date_gmt":"2012-11-18T16:05:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2012\/11\/wiregrass-alley-for-local-agricultural-knowledge-based-jobs.html"},"modified":"2012-11-18T11:05:58","modified_gmt":"2012-11-18T16:05:58","slug":"wiregrass-alley-for-local-agricultural-knowledge-based-jobs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2012\/11\/wiregrass-alley-for-local-agricultural-knowledge-based-jobs.html","title":{"rendered":"Wiregrass Alley for local agricultural knowledge-based jobs"},"content":{"rendered":"

\nWhat jobs and businesses can we\n\nbuild out of local agriculture and VSU and Wiregrass Tech and GMC\nand SGMC and Moody<\/a>? Build like the way Silicon Valley grew out of\nStanford and HP and Intel, but different, drawing on our local strengths?\nVarious things, no doubt, but the companies\nthe VDT listed in its\n\nagricultural heartland<\/a> article\nsuggest maybe Wiregrass Alley:\n<\/p>\n

\n

\nWhen you factor in businesses such as South Georgia Pecan, PCA, the\nLangdale Company,\n\n<\/a>\nShiloh Farms, Dupont, Arizona Chemical, ERCO\nWorldwide, Coggins Farms, Carter and Sons, and the additional\nfarmers represented by Farmer Browns, the impact of agriculture in\nLowndes County alone is one of the largest private, non-governmental\nindustries. Across the region, ag and forestry sustain the economies\nof a number of counties.\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\nMany of those are obviously agricultural, but Dupont, Arizona Chemical,\nand ERCO?\nOK, I’ll buy\n\nArizona Chemical<\/a>\nwhich turns pine products into adhesives and smells.\nBut DuPont?\nSure, they make chemical fertilizer,\nbut that’s like listing Chevron as a home heating company.\n<\/p>\n

\nAnd what’s this\n\nERCO Worldwide<\/a>, which provides chemicals like caustic soda for PCA?\nERCO Worldwide’s other name hereabouts is\nSterling Pulp Chemicals.\nThat’s right, the VDT listed Sterling Chemicals as an agricultural company!\nWell, that’s hard to deny, because,\naccording to\n\nFundingUniverse<\/a>,\nSterling Chemicals\n“was founded in 1986 to acquire and operate Monsanto Co.’s petrochemical plant in Texas City, Texas.”\nNobody can say Monsanto isn’t agricultural, when 90+% of corn, soybeans,\ncotton, and peanuts grown hereabouts are grown from Monsanto seeds.\nWhich is why we have so many chemical fertilizers and poisonous\npesticides being used around here.\nIs that really the direction we want to go?\n<\/p>\n

\nWhat if we turn the VDT’s list around,\n\n<\/a>\nand start with the “additional farmers”\nrepresented by Farmer Brown and Carters?\nYou know, the ones who sell at Valdosta Farm Days?\nFarmers markets have\n\nincreased 6% on average for the past decade.<\/a>\nWhy is that?\nPartly because of\nthe conversations and community\nat a farmers market.\nAnybody who has gone to Valdosta Farm Days or Hahira Farm Days can attest to that.\nAnd it’s not just anecdotal:\nthere is\n\nresearch to demonstrate that in farmers markets compared to supermarkets:<\/a>\n<\/p>\n

\n

\nOn average, the sociologists found, people were having ten times as\nmany conversations per visit.\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\nAnother reason farmers markets are spreading so fast is\npeople are paying attention to the increasing number of scientific\nreports that “conventional” agriculture is poisoning us,\nsuch as\n\nthe recent one that demonstrates that even the inert ingredients\nin Roundup are poisonous<\/a>\nor the one that links the active ingredient, glyphosate,\n\nto Parkinson’s disease.<\/a>\nMaybe they’ve heard about Monsanto\n\nbeing sued for “devastating birth defects” and chemical poisoning.<\/a>\nAnd most farmers market customers seem to like fresh local foods that\ntaste good and that support local farmers.\n<\/p>\n

\n\n<\/a>\nSo what if we started with those “additional farmers”\nthat sell at Farmer Brown and Carters and Valdosta Farm Days?\nThey are the ones already starting in a different direction.\nA direction that is actually\n\nmore profitable<\/a>,\nin addition to healthier (and less flooding and more wildlife).\nCrop rotation takes more thought and more labor (more jobs!)\nthan just spraying,\nbut it also takes a lot less expense on patented seeds and chemicals,\nfor a net financial profit.\n<\/p>\n

\nWhich could help explain why\n\nthe USDA says<\/a>:\n<\/p>\n

\n

\nConsumer demand for organically produced goods has shown\ndouble-digit growth for well over a decade, providing market\nincentives for U.S. farmers across a broad range of products.\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\nThe USDA is talking certified organic, which has so many hoops\nto jump through that most local producers are not certified, yet many\n\n<\/a>\nalso aren’t using a lot of chemical inputs and are using\ncrop rotation and other organic techniques.\nTechniques which many old-timers around here will recognize,\nbecause they used to use them a half century ago,\nbut with new wrinkles such as computerized records and\nrecent research that may make them even more effective.\nThat’s right:\nmodern organic and local agriculture is a knowledge-based industry.\n<\/p>\n

\nWhat has all this got to do with the colleges and SGMC and Moody?\n\n<\/a>\nMoody could be a big customer for local agricultural produce,\nas could the local K-12 schools; VSU already is.\nWiregrass Tech can (and already is) help teach people how to grow\norganic or with fewer manufactured inputs.\nVSU and GMC can study how that’s working out,\nin conjunction with SGMC, which eventually will have fewer\ncases of some kinds of diseases to deal with.\nHow many cases, of what kinds of diseases?\nThere’s a field of research we could lead,\nalong with the agricultural industry to cause such improvements in health:\nhealthy jobs from planting to PhDs!\n<\/p>\n

\nAnd if we do want other kinds of knowledge-based businesses and workers\n(which is where Silicon Valley usually gets mentioned),\nI think we’ll find they like a place that produces local healthy foods.\n<\/p>\n

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