Economic suffering from jobs lost to automation and the COVID-19 pandemic accelerate the need for multiple income streams from family members and businesses. The earlier post, "Rebirth of Self Worth," suggests ways children even can help generate income by adding lemonade and hot dog stands and entertainment to family yard sales. The following examples show how some businesses find new market segments eager to try their products.
Hard to mow hilly parks overgrown with invasive buckthorn bushes and honeysuckle inspired the formation of the HaakHagen Goat Grazing farm run by a couple of friends in Wisconsin. Their 88 agile goats, rented out to private landowners and government land, also help preserve prairies by nibbling invasive species and shrubs that block the sun needed by shorter native plants. The goats are gentler on the land than heavy mowing machinery, what they leave behind eliminates the need for some fertilizer and adults and children find the goats fun to watch.
Renting out RVs during the pandemic has become a new business catering to both vacationing families and virtual employees looking for office space while sheltering at home. When pleasure and business travelers return to the skies, they are likely to receive airline-branded Honeywell Safety Packs containing single-use gloves, hand wipes and face masks. Trendwatching.com reports Honeywell offers airline crews reusable packs of safety glasses and face masks with interchangeable filters.
What is obvious from these three businesses is the way they each seized opportunities to serve multiple market segments. Clothing manufacturers now have an opportunity to produce double-duty items for home and business wear. Educational suppliers can think in terms of the home and school markets. Online retailers might gain multiple incomes from pop-up holiday shops, and more and more similar ideas will create new jobs and economic growth.
Showing posts with label goats. Show all posts
Showing posts with label goats. Show all posts
Friday, June 12, 2020
Sunday, March 8, 2020
Threats to Olympic Sites
Insurance companies feared financial losses if the coronavirus caused the cancellation of this summer's 2020 Olympic Games in Toyota. As it turned out, the games were rescheduled for July, 2021. Violence, including World War II, that marred the noble purpose of the games in the past, could again be a factor next year, if North Korea continues to launch missiles toward Japan.
Environmental threats from pollution and climate change also have had an impact on the Olympics. Debris in the waters off Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, before the 2016 summer Olympics worried open-water swimmers and skippers in boating events. High winds delayed skiing events and kept spectators off the slopes at the 2018 winter games in Pyeongchang, South Korea.
Despite efforts to switch away from fossil fuels and plant trees to control the sand and dirt blown south from the Gobi Desert, athletes at the 2022 winter Olympics in China could face a breathing, as well as a competitive, challenge at events in Yanqing and Chongli, north of Beijing. During winter, heating homes and factories increases pollution in an area that suffers year round. Smog is likely to obscure views from the 4-story tower built in Yanqing to give visitors to the Olympics a glimpse of the Great Wall of China.
Since the fur from four goats is needed to respond to the fashion industry's demand for one cashmere sweater, grazing goats turned the Mongolian steppes north of China into a desert no longer capable of protecting Beijing from wind-blown sand. To stabilize top soil, the government removed up to 700,000 villagers in northern China from land designated for planting trees. However, at the same time climate change reduced rainfall in arid areas, many non-native trees planted in China required more water and worsened water shortages. An attempt to plant shrubs needing less water is underway. In any case, it is hard to know if China's new trees and shrubs will be ready to shield 2022's Olympic athletes from the Gobi Desert's blowing sand. According to Congbin Fu, the director of the Institute for Climate and Global Change Research at Nanjing University, growing forests is a long-term process that "can take several decades or even 100 years."
Environmental threats from pollution and climate change also have had an impact on the Olympics. Debris in the waters off Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, before the 2016 summer Olympics worried open-water swimmers and skippers in boating events. High winds delayed skiing events and kept spectators off the slopes at the 2018 winter games in Pyeongchang, South Korea.
Despite efforts to switch away from fossil fuels and plant trees to control the sand and dirt blown south from the Gobi Desert, athletes at the 2022 winter Olympics in China could face a breathing, as well as a competitive, challenge at events in Yanqing and Chongli, north of Beijing. During winter, heating homes and factories increases pollution in an area that suffers year round. Smog is likely to obscure views from the 4-story tower built in Yanqing to give visitors to the Olympics a glimpse of the Great Wall of China.
Since the fur from four goats is needed to respond to the fashion industry's demand for one cashmere sweater, grazing goats turned the Mongolian steppes north of China into a desert no longer capable of protecting Beijing from wind-blown sand. To stabilize top soil, the government removed up to 700,000 villagers in northern China from land designated for planting trees. However, at the same time climate change reduced rainfall in arid areas, many non-native trees planted in China required more water and worsened water shortages. An attempt to plant shrubs needing less water is underway. In any case, it is hard to know if China's new trees and shrubs will be ready to shield 2022's Olympic athletes from the Gobi Desert's blowing sand. According to Congbin Fu, the director of the Institute for Climate and Global Change Research at Nanjing University, growing forests is a long-term process that "can take several decades or even 100 years."
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