Financial Permaculture
I’m extremely happy that I attended the Financial Permaculture course in Hohenwald, Tennessee this past weekend. I chose to attend the course to learn more about the business of ethanol production and because it was being held only 20 miles from my home here in Perry County, TN. The ethanol part of the course was instructed by Luke Stangel, Pat Therrien and Greg Landua.
Luke Stangel is President & CEO of PESCO-BEAM Environmental Solutions, Inc. Luke has started three ethanol companies which ultimately produced 3.5 million gallons of ethanol per year. His current company, PESCO-BEAM, designs and builds biofuel production facilities all around the world. Pat Therrien has been working with Luke for over 22 years as an ethanol plant technician. Greg Landua has studied marine and terrestrial ecology and evolutionary biology in the Galapagos Islands, translated for Amazonian rain forest guides, fought wildfires in Alaska, and studied nuances of ecology and ethics. He is currently the Program Coordinator for the Ecovillage Training Center in Summertown, TN.
Other course instructors included Catherine Autin Fitts, former Assistant Secretary of Housing under the George H. W. Bush administration and president of the successful investment bank, Hamilton Securities Group. She is now the president of Solari, Inc and lives not far from my home here in Tennessee. Another great Tennessean Franklin Sanders was a speaker at the Financial Permaculture course. He has written or co-authored six books including Silver Bonanza: How to Profit From the Coming Bull Market in Silver (1993) and The Next Great Depression Survival Manual (2001). He publishes The Money Changer newsletter.
This was the first year for the Financial Permaculture course and there are plans for making it a yearly event. Using the great knowledge I was given, I have plans to build a small permaculte farm to produce ethanol fuel and organic food.
