Monthly Archives: December 2007

Sweet Potato Barons Of Mississippi!

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A cloud of white clay dust erupted from my jeans as I slapped my hands on my legs, trying in vain to remove the dirt from my hands. My uncle live in state of Mississippi. I’ve always remembered that hot Mississippi morning in September when I was when I was visiting my cousins and helping them dig sweet potatoes. We wanted to finish early so we would have time to go fishing later before it got dark. To them, digging for those golden roots in the ground was a living; to me it was something that was standing in the way of us having fun.

A lot has changed over the years. Instead of the little 60 acre ‘tater patch, my cousins produced 2500 acres of sweet potatoes this year in several different varieties. After they ran out of their own land, it seemed that they leased every vacant lot or field they could find and planted more potatoes.

Your Tennessee Business- From Music to Scientific Research

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Tennessee is a medium sized state with 5.6 million people living there. The largest city is Memphis, though the capital and largest metropolitan area is Nashville, with 1.5 million people. Nashville is located in North-central Tennessee and is known for its role in the country music business. Another advantage of Tennessee is that state income taxes only apply to stocks, bonds and other financial income. That’s another thing to think about when you make your Tennessee Incorporation. Tennessee also has “right-to-work” laws. Tennessee is the producer of a variety of agricultural crops including sweet corn and strawberries, cotton and the cattle industry, with 90,000 cattle and beef farms in the state.

All the big four country labels have offices in Nashville. The other large business in the city, aside from government offices is the hospital industry, where the Hospital Corporation of America has national offices for its chain of hospitals all across the nation. Parts of the automobile industry have moved to Nashville, with Nissan, the Japanese manufacturer moving its US headquarters there, and also a major plant to Smyrna, a Nashville suburb. Bridgestone America, the Japanese tire manufacturer has offices in Nashville. Bridgestone has 4,900 workers at a production plant in Nashville, and is opening up a storage facility in nearby Lebanon, Tennessee.

Memphis is located on the Mississippi River, in Tennessee, with a population of a little less than 700,000. Memphis also has a long tradition in the music business, being the original stomping grounds of blues performance, such as B.B. King. The Beale St. neighbor hood features the Gibson Guitar Co. plant and also its Beale St. Showcase and restaurant. Memphis is also known for its Mardi Gras festivities, probably the biggest one in the United States after New Orleans.

FedEx maintains a central facility in Memphis, which has helped make the Memphis Airport a large cargo handling airports. This includes the central FedEx mail sorting facility. Corporations such as FedEx Corporation, AutoZone Incorporated and International Paper have made Memphis their home. International Paper Royal Blue is a small chip mill in Pioneer, Tennessee, while International Paper has a plant in Memphis that employs 3,000 people. Among other products that the company produces are the plastic and paper packaging for various fast food chains. AutoZone is also the sponsor of the Liberty Bowl Stadium in Memphis. Schools in Memphis include the Christian Brothers University, which is a Catholic school on a 75-acre campus in the middle of town and the Memphis College of Art, located next to the Art Museum.

Knoxville, in Eastern Tennessee is a research and educational center. It has the main campus of the University of Tennessee. In nearby Oakridge, are the Oak Ridge National Laboratory and other Department of Energy facilities. Oak Ridge was part of the Manhattan Project to create a nuclear bomb during World War II. Today, the laboratory has the Oak Ridge Electron Linear Accelerator Pulsed Neutron Source, and other facilities for nuclear and neutron research. The laboratory is also a center for biological research including genomics, the study of an organism’s entire gene map and coding. Also headquartered in Knoxville, is the government agency, the Tennessee Valley Authority.