West Virginia’s local food economy gets national attention...

To those working on local foods in Central Appalachia, it's no secret that West Virginia is making huge strides on building up their local food economy. They've been doing so well that recently the federal co-chair of the Appalachian Regional Commission paid them a visit to see what the rest of Appalachia could learn from West Virginia's success. And the Washington Post took notice, writing a recent article on the visit.  [I]n Philippi, they’re seeing how an out-of-business IGA is becoming a new kind of supermarket, one where jams, flowers, baked goods and produce are gathered from dozens of sources and sold at a single cash register. “Instead of 30 people marketing their wares, you have one person marketing the wares for everyone,” said Savanna Lyons, program director for the West Virginia Food & Farm Coalition. The concept is called aggregating, and it’s catching on. “Being small and isolated can be both an advantage and a disadvantage,” said Lyons, who’s trying to help federal officials understand the opportunities and the obstacles to using food as an economic development tool. "When it’s harder to get your products out there, you have to organize more. You have to get creative. You have to really talk to each other,” Lyons said. …What’s happening in West Virginia, he [Earl Gohl, federal co-chair of the ARC] said, is impressive in both scope and enthusiasm. Though it has just 1.8 million people, the state has emerged as a leader in the local-foods movement. Since 2005, the...

Despite bad coal news, still plenty of room for hope

If you follow ATI on Facebook or Twitter, you likely already know the latest bad news about Eastern Kentucky's coal economy. The region lost 773 jobs between January and March of this year, contributing to a drop in employment of over 38% – and a 42% drop in production – in the past 18 months. (Statewide production remained relatively steady in the first quarter of 2013, thanks to the increase in production at Western Kentucky coal mines.) According to the Lexington Herald-Leader, coal jobs statewide are at their lowest level since 1950 – and 96% of all the coal jobs lost in the last 18 months were from Eastern Kentucky.  While many of our elected officials point fingers at the EPA, pretending that the problem is permitting and not geology and economics, our miners, their families and their communities are left to figure out what to do now.  There is room for hope, of course, as there always is. As a recent editorial from the Hazard Herald put it, "Hope is the catalyst for success in life." And that same editorial goes on to describe a very hopeful thing – the Appalachian Teaching and Leadership Network: Stakeholders in the Appalachian Teaching and Leadership Network (ATLN) are convinced that we can use our “rural genius” to usher in an Appalachian Renaissance, raising educational levels and growing the economy. We have seized upon the innovative Kentucky Work Ready Community program created by the Kentucky Workforce Investment Board as the blueprint to tie education to job growth....

Preserving Forests, Helping Appalachians

The good folks at Making Connections News have a great story on the Appalachian Carbon Partnership, a project of MACED's (along with Rural Action and Appalachian Sustainable Development). ACP helps forest owners in Central Appalachia preserve their forests for future generations by selling the carbon offsets their forests generate. Because forest stewardship can be costly – and many family forest owners cut their timber to pay pressing bills – offset payments can really make a difference. Here's what Making Connections has to say about their radio story:  Central Appalachia loses more than 130 acres of forestland everyday, as economic pressures force families to clear their land.  Nearly 90 percent of forestland is privately owned and less than 5 percent of that land is under sustainable management. An innovative pilot program called the Appalachian Carbon Partnership is working to reverse this trend.  A project of the Mountain Association for Community Economic Development  (MACED), in partnership with Appalachian Sustainable Development and Rural Action, ACP supports the practice of good forest management by selling carbon offsets that compensate landowners for the carbon sequestered in their trees each year. WMMT visited the Stickney Family in Estill County, KY, where they are sustainably managing their woodlands, and talked with various folks who support land and landowners by buying Appalachian Forest Offsets. Listen to the whole radio story...

McConnell Must Focus on Transition, not Rhetoric

by Ivy Brashear Senator Mitch McConnell followed up his recent trip to eastern Kentucky with an editorial in the Hazard Herald that makes some interesting and misleading claims about coal mining in the region. Even more importantly, it avoids comment on the critical question we should all be asking: What are we going to do to build a new economy as coal in eastern Kentucky goes away?   McConnell wrote that  “President Obama’s policies have raised energy rates, decreased domestic energy production, and cost jobs,” and that “a barrage” of EPA regulations has strangled the coal industry. After four years, he says, “it is clear this administration has declared war on coal.”    Since this President was elected, his policies and the EPA have been blamed for the decline of coal. Yet serious and consistent evidence points to major changes in the economy of coal that deserve the primary blame. McConnell’s repeating of this “EPA is the problem” story continues to get in the way of the critical conversation about what is next for our economy.   The reasons for Appalachia’s coal-production decline are more complex and varied than McConnell lets on. The meteoric rise in natural gas production and the rapid decline of easily minable coal in Appalachia are certainly factors. Stricter EPA Clean Air Act regulation that drives utilities to shutter coal-fired power plants in favor of cleaner-burning natural gas plants also plays a role. The international coal market, which is growing fastest in Asia, relies heavily...

Video: Justin Maxson on “Just Transition”

Kentuckians for the Commonwealth has been hard at work collecting video, photos and other material from the Appalachia's Bright Future conference. We want to share with you this clip from one of the plenaries, where MACED President Justin Maxson discusses what a just transition looks like.  What do you think? What will it take to achieve a just transition to a diversified economy in...

What’s Appalachia For?

Though some of our politicians might disagree, we know Appalachia is more than just coal, and we know Appalachians can do more than mine it.  Coal is important, it’s history and heritage, it’s provided a purpose and a living for thousands through the decades, but its days are dwindling and no number of EPA permits will make our coal competitive with the price of Wyoming coal or Illinois basin coal or natural gas. There’s an old saying, “Adapt or die,” and at the Appalachia’s Bright Future conference, we heard about different communities that either heeded or ignored that adage when their dominant industry fell on hard times. The Daily Yonder today featured an excellent report on the conference and the important lessons to be gleaned from other regions. Take the example of the fisheries in Newfoundland, closed by the Canadian government after being rampantly overfished: “The way coal companies are treating retirees now [in Appalachia] sure sounds familiar,” [Brendan] Smith [a former cod fisherman] says.  He notes that these industries don’t understand the nature of work—or what work meant to these fishermen.  “Without jobs, they gave us checks. Money is great, I love money. But we lost our purpose.  We would spend that check to buy a brand new beautiful truck, and we’d drink ourselves to death while wishing we were out on the boat.” After the cod industry collapsed, people found replacement jobs.  They had a job at a call center selling seatbelts for pets.  “The jobs they...