{"id":1334544,"date":"2023-11-16T09:45:00","date_gmt":"2023-11-16T09:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/grist.org\/?p=622844"},"modified":"2023-11-16T09:45:00","modified_gmt":"2023-11-16T09:45:00","slug":"a-celebrated-startup-promised-kentuckians-green-jobs-it-gave-them-a-grueling-hell-on-earth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2023\/11\/16\/a-celebrated-startup-promised-kentuckians-green-jobs-it-gave-them-a-grueling-hell-on-earth\/","title":{"rendered":"A celebrated startup promised Kentuckians green jobs. It gave them a \u2018grueling hell on earth.\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
This story was produced by Grist and co-published with the <\/em>Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n The workers had spent the morning of November 8, 2021, clipping, trussing, and trellising hundreds of thousands of tomato plants that twisted almost four stories into the air. They were inside one of the world\u2019s largest high-tech greenhouses, which sits on more than 60 acres of a former cattle field in Morehead, Kentucky.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As one of the greenhouse workers, who I\u2019ll call Nora, sat down for lunch in the worker canteen, she heard her colleagues whisper about their new task for the day. U.S. Senator Mitch McConnell would be visiting that afternoon to give a speech praising the greenhouse company, AppHarvest. Before he arrived, management had to make sure their Spanish-speaking colleagues disappeared.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe had very little time,\u201d recalled Nora, whose real name is being withheld because she is subject to a nondisclosure agreement. \u201cWe had to get them off the premises and away before he got there.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Nora watched her coworkers get dismissed, grab their stuff, and leave on white buses bound for a trio of small motels where the largely Mexican contract workers lived four or five to a room. When McConnell arrived, Nora joined her remaining, mostly-white colleagues on the sunny lawn. Their clean T-shirts advertised AppHarvest\u2019s name and logo, intended to invoke both the Appalachian region where they worked and the iconic branding of Apple \u2014 Silicon Valley by way of the Middle American upstart. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe all know the decline of the coal industry only got worse, and so this [AppHarvest] gives us hope,\u201d the senator said, praising the local labor force encircling him. \u201cYou are the real leaders, I think, in beginning to fully develop all of Kentucky\u2019s potential.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n It was a familiar message, one that had been touted over and over in nationally televised interviews, public filings, and company reports by AppHarvest\u2019s then-CEO, a Kentucky native and entrepreneur named Jonathan Webb. In 2018, the 32-year-old Webb returned home with the promise of building a dozen high-tech, hydroponic indoor farms across Eastern Kentucky and the surrounding region, growing tomatoes, cucumbers, berries, and lettuce. Not only would he be piloting an advanced form of climate-resilient agriculture, he would also be generating gainful, blue-collar employment in some of the country\u2019s most economically-distressed counties, where he argued that the coal industry\u2019s downfall<\/a> left a void that could be filled by sustainable industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n