As North Carolina continues to search for an economic substitute for small, family tobacco growers, reports continue to surface from various research projects that show promising new adaptive uses for the plant.
Popular Science is one of my three favorite magazines dating from when I could first read (the other two are National Geographic and Sports Illustrated.) Recently POPSCI has featured two reports on research showing tobacco might be used to manufacture solar panels and now this month about it being use to produce flu vaccines.
Wouldn’t be ironic now that my adopted hometown of Durham NC has long since transformed to a worldwide center for biotech, phama research and bio-manufacturing and historic tobacco buildings have been turned into thriving spaces for offices, restaurants, stores….to one day see the adaptive reuse of the plant that started it all as a tool to save lives and green the planet!
It is also an irony that may preserve North Carolina’s sense of place by making the rural countryside and family farms sustainable.
No comments:
Post a Comment