It is one
thing to offer negative criticism, which we did regarding Meta’s
proposed AI data center in Richland Parish.
It is also necessary to offer positive alternatives to the thing being
critiqued. We offered a few ideas but
nothing substantive in the previous essay.
We wish to correct that here.
Richland
Parish, as the name implies, is a place where farming predominates (lsuagcenter.com). Rather than deny the history and culture of
the parish by imposing a destructive AI data center, the people there should
let the past inspire the future.
There are
two promising possibilities in this regard:
creating industrial products from river cane and/or from hemp. Both have long histories in Southern life.
River cane
has been around for millennia:
‘Once a
dominant feature of the southeastern United States, canebrakes dominated
hundreds of thousands of acres along floodplains and stream bottoms. Large
expanses of canebrakes were often described by early explorers in the
Southeast. In the 1770's, William Bartram explored much of the southeast United
States and describes canebrakes often in his description of floodplains and
creek bottoms. From these descriptions, it appears that canebrakes were both
ubiquitous and expansive’ (rivercane.msstate.edu).
It is
extremely fast growing, up to 1.5 inches/day in the springtime (Ibid.). The Native Americans in Louisiana relied on
it to make various items:
‘In central
Louisiana, the U.S. Forest Service is spearheading efforts to restore river
cane, a bamboo-like plant that played a vital role in Native American culture
for thousands of years. This significant piece of tribal heritage has become
increasingly rare, prompting an effort to bring it back.
‘Rose
Fisher, an elder of the Jena Choctaw
Tribe, takes me to a roadside patch of river cane in the town of Jena,
Louisiana. . . . Holding up a nearly 200-year-old basket made
by one of her ancestors, Fisher highlights its importance. The basket was
likely used to store or dry food, she explains. Additionally, river cane has
been crafted into various tools and instruments, including whistles and
blowguns’ (‘River Cane’, heartoflouisiana.com).
In addition
to these traditional uses, bamboo grasses like river cane can be used to make a
wide array of products:
‘Bamboo is a
category of fast-growing and widely distributed perennials having unique
physical and mechanical properties. The mechanical properties of bamboo are
often higher (typically by two to three times) than those of conventional
timbers, and it has become a very important raw material for the household/
building industries. Bamboo has been commercially used for the production of
indoor and outdoor floors, furniture, and structural timber for building. Some
performance defects/ drawbacks of bamboo have been effectively remedied, due to
the new technologies, such as bamboo scrimber, which facilitates the market
penetration/ acceptance of bamboo-based household and building products’ (Qiu,
H., Xu, J., He, Z., Long, L., and Yue, X., ‘Bamboo as an emerging source of raw
material for household and building products’, bioresources.cnr.ncsu.edu).
The market
for bamboo products is expanding rapidly:
‘There are
about 100 bamboo species that are economically important. In the 1980s the
total revenue of bamboo and its products reached 4.5 billion US dollars. In
2005 the global bamboo product market was about 7 billion US dollars. By 2015
the number had grown to an astonishing 60 billion US dollars.
‘China is
rich in bamboo resources and has a global leading level in the research and
utilization of bamboo. In 2017 its industrial output value of bamboo was 35
billion US dollars, ranking first in the world, and it increased 11.2% compared
with that in 2016 (Dai et al. 2017). More and more attention has been
paid to the economic benefits and social value of bamboo, and the development
prospects of bamboo products are expected.
‘ . . .
Bamboo fibers have been used in many industries, for example the garment/
textile, automotive, pulp and paper industries. Due to its excellent
durability, fire safety, environmental impact, user safety, energy efficiency,
and so on, bamboo is one of the ideal raw materials for the production of
sustainable household/ building products. In fact, the household/ construction
sector accounts for 30 to 40% of the annual bamboo consumption in the world’
(Ibid.).
Combining a
manufacturing facility at the Franklin Farm megasite in Richland Parish with
surrounding farms dedicated to growing river cane is one possibility. Pairing a factory with farms dedicated to
growing industrial hemp is another.
Hemp is also
embedded deep within Southern history:
. . .
The rest is
at https://thehayride.com/2024/11/garlington-industrial-ag-alternatives-to-metas-ai-data-center/.
--
Holy Ælfred the Great, King of England, South Patron, pray for us
sinners at the Souð, unworthy though we are!
Anathema to the Union!
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