This morning a bit more than one hundred Glasgow - Barren County residents and officials attended a talk by Dr. Pearse Lyons, President of Alltech. I was totally unfamiliar with Alltech even though the signs trumpeting the upcoming Alltech FEI World Equestrian Games are all over the Commonwealth. I am not sure if his talk was meant to promote the Equestrian Games or Alltech or Dr. Lyons, but a bit of each was done.
Alltech's website tells a lot more about this company and they seem to be on the sustainability wagon with us. However, it appears that they might also be a part of the "feed your cattle plenty of pharmaceuticals" band wagon as well, but right now that is not clear to me. At any rate, he was very encouraging about how many infrastructure projects are possible and advisable for small communities in Kentucky to move toward a sustainable food economy. To a large extent he painted a picture of a perpetual motion machine wherein local producers of grass, grain, and other cellulose plants feed into beef and dairy operations which, in turn, produce waste and biomass that is then turned back into electric power and other energy sources that can then be plowed back into the energy requirements of producing the grass and grains. It was just another way of discussing what we are already all about.
They had the right audience there. Many local officials were nodding. Educators from local k-12 schools as well as WKU were nodding in agreement as he painted this scenario and virtually guaranteed us all that this is not only doable, but also affordable and capable of actually producing new jobs and net income while also providing sustainable food economy for a place like Glasgow.
All that is needed after a talk like that is for some passionate locals to take up the gauntlet of pushing our local officials to walk the talk instead of just listening to the talk. That is where we come in, is it not?
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Billy:
Let me jump in with some comments about Alltech. I respect Dr. Lyons and his business approach. However, I don't know that I agree with him listing his company with the pharmaceuticals on the "ranking" slide he used. To my knowledge, none of Alltech's products are regulated by the FDA as an antibiotic.
His path to success has been through the use of yeasts for fermentation enhancement (both in brewing and animal nutrition). Their latest animal nutrition product has been an all-natural selenium product.
In my humble opinion however, his true, underlying key to success is what you saw yesterday -- MARKETING.
My thoughts,
David P. Givens
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