Business Industry

Cash Crop

After several years of on and off drought conditions, Georgia farm-ers saw 2009 unfold with seemingly unending rains that kept them out of the fields during the critical spring planting season. The warm, wet weather that followed created ideal conditions…

Life's Work

It took Fuller Cochran 10 years to buy his farm in the Appalachian foothills of Whitfield County, beginning in 1932, at a cost of one bale of cotton per year. It was an investment in a future he could not…

Going For The Gold

Atlanta will be the center of the biotech universe this month when it hosts the BIO International Convention, May 18-21, at the Georgia World Congress Center. If there were an Olympics for the global life sciences industry, this would be…

Holding Their Own

From the windows of their airy and plush offices in Duluth, employees of Delta Community Credit Union can see the building that once housed Haven Trust Bank. The red and blue logo still adorns the top of the otherwise nondescript…

2009 Industry Outlook

The director of the Selig Center for Economic Research at the University of Georgia’s Terry College of Business reports on some key Georgia industries and their prospects for the year ahead. Ports Decreases in international trade, decreases in industrial production…

Hard Times

Builders aren’t building and bulldozers are idle. New McMansions sit vacant. Businesses are declaring bankruptcy, and unemployment numbers are growing. Automakers want government bailout money because they can’t sell cars, in part because consumers can’t get loans from skittish banks,…

Where The Jobs Are 2009

Difficult but not impossible is the way Labor Commissioner Michael Thurmond describes the outlook for Georgians seeking work in 2009, even though the current downturn is expected to continue for many months. The numbers are sobering. The state shed some…

Staff Of Life

It’s midmorning and Flowers Foods CEO George Deese is near the end of a 30-minute meeting when he’s gently reminded by one of his executives that he has a plane to catch. Rising from his chair, Deese announces he is…

Green Harvest

There’s an energy harvest in Georgia as utility companies look to the state’s abundant forests for a clean fuel stock to satisfy a growing appetite for electricity and lessen reliance on coal-fired plants that spew harmful greenhouse gases, such as…