Rural places should be able to build their local economies by drawing on pension funds in their regions, strategizing across economic sectors and creating organizations that are willing to take risks and mobilize capital, major speakers said last week at the Growing Local Economies Forum sponsored by the University of Kentucky's Appalachian Center.
Economist Michael Shuman, author of The Small-Mart Revolution and researcher for the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies, told attendees that most investment dollars are not going to local business, which could generate more jobs "if they could get better financing, for instance from pension plans in their regions," the center said in a report. "He suggested that states 'tweak' their securities laws to allow local businesses to issue shares that investors could buy."
“Communities that don’t make it are the ones with one economic sector as a strategy,” said Becky Anderson, a founder of western North Carolina’s HandMade in America, which "has strengthened its region’s crafts economy [by] connecting craftspeople with builders to providing automobile trail guides to artists’ studios and gardens," the center reports.
In southwest Virginia and northeast Tennessee, former tobacco farmers have switched to organic crops and are selling them to supermarkets through Appalachian Harvest, a network of certified organic farmers that figures out what farmers should grow to meet grocers' and consumers' needs and provides a packing house and distribution system. Anthony Flaccavento, founder of Appalachian Harvest’s parent organization, Appalachian Sustainable Development, "said it is important to have an organization that is willing to take risks and mobilize capital," the center reports.
The forum was held Oct. 29 in Hazard. For more information, contact Appalachian Center Director Evelyn Knight or Alison Davis, a Cooperative Extension economic development specialist at the university.
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