sustainable development
BUILDING AN ECOBUSINESS INFRASTRUCTURE IN APPALACHIA
A rapidly growing effort is underway to rejuvenate the Central Appalachian economy through locally based, ecologically healthy enterprises.

Anthony Flaccavento

More and more independent, innovative entrepreneurs are helping to rejuvenate the Central Appalachian economy through locally based, ecologically healthy enterprises. Their businesses have names like Highlands BioProduce, Appalachian Harvest and Full Cycle Woodworks.

At the center of this “sustainable development” ferment is a regional nonprofit organization called Appalachian Sustainable Development (ASD). Begun in October, 1995, ASD is an action-oriented organization comprised of farmers, loggers, entrepreneurs, community-based organizations, environmental groups, and economic development agencies. This unlikely association of interests initially came together around a simple but enormously challenging question: How can we diversify and strengthen our region’s economy and better conserve our environment? ASD works with a variety of low-moderate income entrepreneurs, primarily in sustainable agriculture, and sustainable forestry and wood products.

The ten-county area of southwestern Virginia and northeast Tennessee where ASD and its partners reside has sustained high jobless and poverty rates, even as the economy of most of the United States has boomed. Unemployment rates are two to four times higher than in the rest of the county, exceeding 15 percent in some counties. The Central Appalachian economic pillars of coal mining and tobacco agriculture are in decline. Jobs in Virginia’s coal mining industry fell by more than 50 percent between 1986 and 1996. While tobacco remains a relatively profitable crop, the margin for tobacco farmers is shrinking, with net profitability declining by nearly one third since the early 1980s. This has lead to increased consolidation and mechanization in tobacco, with fewer farmers and those left growing it on a larger scale.

With nearly 60 percent of the region’s land mass in forests, the timber industry is expanding rapidly, creating some new jobs and spawning opportunistic logging firms. Because some of these loggers lack adequate training and experience, and because much of the harvested wood is destined for chip mills and other lower value manufacturing, pressure on the forest resource base is increasing dramatically. Whether on farm, in the forest or in factories, Appalachian communities increasingly face “jobs or the environment” trade offs, a conundrum from which there often seems little escape.

AN ALTERNATIVE UNFOLDS

There is, however, another Appalachian tale unfolding, one that will perhaps be instructive for rural communities throughout the United States and much of the world. It is the evolving story of community-based initiatives to regenerate the Central Appalachian economy and culture from within. This story includes:

• Highlands BioProduce, a small but steadily growing company comprised of 30 organic and biological farmers raising produce, along with eggs, meats and some preserved items;

• Appalachian Harvest, a newly formed marketing association that links sustainable farmers to restaurants, health food stores and a locally owned grocery chain;

• Full Cycle Woodworks and other innovative wood manufacturing firms that utilize sustainably harvested local timber and lower grade wood species to make flooring and other high value products;

• A 4,000-board-foot solar dry kiln for drying local hardwoods in preparation for manufacturing. A 20,000-board-foot solar and wood waste dry kiln is under construction through ASD and the Russell County, Virginia Industrial Development Authority;

• A series of demonstration farms and ecologically sound timber harvesting sites, where sustainable agriculture and forestry systems are being practiced and evaluated, part of a hands-on peer learning network.

Taken together, these enterprises comprise the foundation of an alternative economic development approach that might be called an infrastructure for sustainability. In our experience, such an infrastructure is necessary not only to enhance individual “green” businesses, but to build broader community and institutional support essential to a more sustainable culture and economy.

ELEMENTS OF A SUSTAINABILITY INFRASTRUCTURE

“The economy is vitally dependent on meaninglessness. The whole commercial community is geared up to exploit and play to meaninglessness. When you feel bad, you go out for a nice lunch or buy yourself something nice.”

— Dr. Thomas Naylor, Duke University

Thomas Pruiksma has characterized the prevailing economic development paradigm as one “that conceives of the majority of the world’s people in terms of what they are not.” (The Ecologist Nov/Dec, 1998.) A sustainable development strategy by contrast, begins with what people are, where they have come from — their culture, heritage, skills and knowledge — and the attributes and constraints of the encompassing bio region. In our experience, Wendell Berry’s questions, about what we should first ask before any course of action: What is already here? What does nature allow us, help us to do here?, led us to focus on high value, sustainable forestry and agriculture in transition from tobacco. To support the sustainable agriculture and forestry sectors, an infrastructure has begun to emerge, including the following elements:

A diversified base of ecologically sustainable local businesses, ranging from farmers, loggers and wood manufacturers, to environmental service providers, energy and waste reduction firms, and more. In a more sustainable community, a high proportion of these businesses would be providing goods and services that help meet essential needs, rather than “gearing up to exploit and play to meaninglessness.”

The growth in sustainable businesses tends to spawn additional enterprises in the region. Two examples of these spin-off firms include a potting soil venture utilizing left-over sawmill sawdust as its main component, and a garlic seed producing business initiated in response to the increasing number of garlic producers in the region.

Ongoing education and training for sustainable entrepreneurs will spawn innovation, resourcefulness and adequate profitability. This educational process uses peer training — “farmer to farmer” workshops, for instance — while also bringing university and technical expertise to the farm, forest and firm. Several ASD partners, including Jubilee Project, Rural Resources, and Lonesome Pine Office on Youth, focus particular attention on high school students and young adults in an effort to reverse the out-migration of youth. Additionally, partnerships with Virginia State, Virginia Tech and the University of Tennessee have brought research and technical expertise directly to the farm and the forest.

BUILDING ASSETS

Asset building and access to capital need to expand for low- and moderate-income entrepreneurs through microenterprise, revolving “green business” loan funds, and cost sharing opportunities for conservation and innovation. Business Start, one of ASD’s partners, has made nearly 100 micro loans in the past four years, while the Nature Conservancy and a church-based “Sustainable Communities Fund” both offer support to environmentally sound small businesses. The Lonesome Pine Office on Youth and the Coalfield Regional Tourism Authority are working to capitalize an ecotourism fund, providing training, loans and equipment to beginning entrepreneurs. ASD’s sustainable agriculture program includes nearly a dozen lead farms, where cost sharing has facilitated the adoption of sustainable practices and systems.

Value-adding facilities will increase jobs and revenues retained in local communities, and reduce extraction pressure on soils, fields and forests. These facilities now include a small solar wood drying kiln, which processes sustainably harvested logs into dried lumber, and a recently opened commercial “kitchen incubator” developed with Jubilee Project in Tennessee’s poorest county. Development of additional incubators and commercial food processing facilities is planned, and a much larger solar and wood waste dry kiln should be operational by early 2000. Without adequate dry kilns, high value logs are shipped out of the region as raw material, increasing waste and energy use, and ironically, leaving hundreds of local crafters and wood manufacturers to purchase imported lumber for their product. The Jubilee kitchen, though small, will provide facilities in which start-up entrepreneurs can develop, test and market high value food and agricultural products, from dried and baked goods to soaps and vinegars.

Regionalized marketing systems, including producer-consumer networks, will build public commitment to sustainable entrepreneurs and increase the viability of these businesses. These marketing systems are usually cooperative in nature, enabling small-scale farmers or other producers to “pool” their product, increasing its marketability. Highlands BioProduce, a regional growers co-op, provides one example: More than two dozen producers from five different counties have built a network that now sells organic produce, eggs and other farm products to restaurants, health food stores, and more recently, grocery stores. The farmers realize 65-75 percent of the retail value of their product compared to the 20-25 percent which U.S. farmers on average secure.

IMPLEMENTING THREE PRINCIPLES

This infrastructure for sustainability is based, fundamentally, upon the three ecological principles of diversity, community, and regeneration. While all three principles might be widely embraced rhetorically, in practice they present a radical challenge to the dominant development paradigm, for it is based upon specialization, the estrangement of producers from consumers, the mobility of capital and people, and the convenience of cheap, ubiquitous, disposable products.

In the communities of Southwest Virginia and East Tennessee, a healthier, more ecologically sound economy is beginning to take shape, built upon some long standing Appalachian values: frugality, resourcefulness, and human relationships. Such an economy will be both market driven and market shaping, creating practical, daily opportunities for people to act responsibly vis-a-vis their neighbors and the natural world.

Anthony Flaccavento is with the Appalachian Sustainable Development, P. O. Box 791, Abingdon, VA 24212; (540) 623-1121; fax (540) 623-1353; email asd@naxs.net.