Local Jobs, Local Wealth and a Fix for Climate Change
July 31, 2020
By Mark Green
Laura Ann Freeman sets the bar high for her seventh-generation, 1,500-acre family farm near Winchester: Make it the linchpin of a new, self-supporting hyperlocal agriculture economy that creates jobs and wealth, while also showing that regenerative land management practice sequesters carbon to reverse climate change.
Upon proving the model in Clark County, she aims to seed it across Kentucky, and then the nation, before scaling up worldwide to solve the global warming.
Yes, to recap, the goal is to create jobs and wealth in rural Kentucky, build an alternative to the industrial agribusiness economic system, and remove the existential threat posed by greenhouse gases.
“I was late to the climate discussion,” said Freeman. “But if the models are correct, we are in for a catastrophe—soon.”
To prevent that and to help the county where her family has lived and farmed since the late 1700s, Freeman dreamt up and is now executing a self-supporting cyclic agribusiness plan to: sustain local farming; create local businesses to buy the livestock and crops from the farm; create local jobs; create local wealth via a parent company that awards stock to employees; and use organic farming techniques that improve the soil by sequestering atmospheric carbon there.
To read the entire article click here!
