When it comes to government and that ever-elusive economic development, we are often encouraged to "think outside the box" to find different ways to do things.
Well, God knows I'm all in favor of taking a different approach to how we do business.
But lately I've been thinking that maybe we should just be taking a look at doing the same old things just a little differently in order to get a different result. In short, we need to look inside the box for answers.
For example, we have lots and lots of trees, but how much do we do with wood products or by-producst? Seaway Timber recently started a wood pellets manufacturing plant here in Massena, but what other "value added" wood products do we produce?
Any furniture? Nope. Chip board? Nope. Hardwood veneer? Not anymore. Custom building products? Not that I know about except for vintage doors in Hammond.
We grow fruits and vegetables, but none on a scale to have a real impact on our economy. Across the border in Canada, they grow sweet corn for canneries and huge volumes of apples, but we don't have produce in that quantity anywhere near by.
Our dairy farmers and their cows crank out thousands of pounds of milk but there is only one yogurt plant in North Lawrence, and three cheese plants in Ogdesnburg, Chateaugay and Lowville.
In short, dairy farmers know how to get their cows to put out milk in bulk but they have no control over the price they get for it and there are few options for someone locally to turn it into other products.
We must find new ways to do what we know how to do but make them economically more viable and create additional jobs.
I've written a lot about the BION project, but why can't we do something similar on a smaller scale? Why can't our dairy farmers convert to beef and why not start processing that beef for market? We know how to care for and grow livestock so maybe we need to find a new bent on that business.
All of the beef in our supermarkets comes from western states. Why? Does that make sense? And have you priced a good porterhouse lately? Not cheap.
So, it's time for us to head back to the drawing board and retool our local economy. And there's no real need to start over from scratch.
Click here and see what people in the Hudson River valley are doing:
http://www.recordonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100718/BIZ/7180307
Believe it or not, that's already happening in some places in the North Country. The problem is that the economic development powers that be only want to look at projects that will create 50 plus jobs, not the small scale operations that will - one day with enough hard work, diligence and marketing - become larger operations. The other is that the purse strings attached to any grants or other funding, i.e. low interest loans, tie the hands of those who wish to start businesses - and that's if they can even qualify for the funding. Lastly, for business to succeed you must have a business-friendly environment. As the owner of several ventures and a bunch of real estate, I can say that true growth will come when our politicians spend less time worrying about how to create revenue and more time saving the taxpayers money.
ReplyDeleteAn elected official who cares about dairy farmers? What are you some kind of freak? It's nice to have somebody who wants to try to help even though it's paddling upstream with a wet noodle. If you have a week some afternoon we could talk cows and the trials and tribulations involved. It's too bad that any changes will come way too late for bovine based agriculture to have a very large impact on our local economy.
ReplyDeleteIt's off to the barn to make my $0.27 cents per hour which I'm supposed to be happy with.