The goals, they said, are to build on the region’s farming legacy with a higher-dollar crop and to offer brewers a unique – and more environmentally sound – product.

They also hope it will attract younger people to agriculture, both through what they believe is the  “cool factor” of growing for the alcohol industry and through a workforce training program at the local community college that will be funded as part of the project.

Tony Lettich, ART Managing Director, said, ““It’s exciting to see that ETSU’s Entrepreneurship Program is scaling up student experiences into the world of angel investing and venture capital. Participating students will have an opportunity to learn how investors evaluate deal structure/term sheets, start-up business models, the competitive environment, go-to-market strategies and exit strategies.”

Dwayne Yancey: Instead of jumping ahead to conclusions that haven’t been reached yet, I’d like to focus on something else, something that communities beyond Southwest Virginia could benefit from: the intentionality of Southwest even asking the question. …The economy, left to its own devices, is already undermining coal as renewables become cheaper but through our policies (such as the Clean Economy Act), we are intentionally – there’s that word again – accelerating its demise. To me, that’s an argument for making sure that the jobs that replace coal are in coal country, otherwise we’re telling a whole section of the country there’s no longer a place for them in the economy, which is another way of saying there’s no place for them in society.