About Alpha Organic Farms

The project inception began with Ike Yancy, a Georgia resident with several years management in the specialty chemicals, management consulting, and renewable energy consulting businesses. A few years ago, Ike was asked to consult on a municipal solid waste to energy project in the Caribbean. In that project, the goal was to eliminate the landfill completely, clean up a harbor, and create some other allied businesses for economic development. Also working on that project were Dave Stoutamire and Deb Andrews, Deb suggested adding a small version of the 4Skies vertical farm because the island was dependent to a great degree on imported food. The central technology for conversion of the MSW turned out to be inefficient, so the project never came to fruition. Ike, Deb, Dave, and Stewart Andrews had enjoyed working together so much that we formed a team to pursue other projects. After consulting together on some other projects, we became aware that the small version of the 4Skies project had undergone considerable additional development. So, we partnered with Steve Brant at 4Skies to develop a large scale version in order to achieve maximum growth and impact and to establish a leadership position in the vertical farming sector. We had access to a perfect site in Natchitoches, Louisiana, which is a 4 hour drive from Houston and a 4 hour drive from Dallas. There are considerable economic development incentives available from the state of Louisiana. Each has a population of 7 million plus people where the market for organic food is ripe for tremendous growth.

We are very excited about implementing this new agricultural technique focused on sustainability of resources, GHG emission reduction, and Community Empowerment

We will use far less land, far less water, and far less nutrients, and we will grow far more food than an open air organic farm. This is a 24/7/365 operation.

We will capture any CO2 that we might generate and use it to enhance growing our crops.

Our smallest facility will be 500,000 square feet. We are focused on becoming a major innovater and a major player in this business.

Mr. Stoutamire has over forty years' supervisory experience in the design and construction industry. Throughout his career he has been responsible for managing corporate, government, and institutional project/program management engagements for clients nationally and internationally. Mr. Stoutamire's experience includes commercial office, industrial distribution, data centers, call/service centers, aviation, manufacturing, retail, retail banking, residential tract development, site utilities infrastructure, railroad industrial sidetracks, surface roads and streets, higher education, medical, and institutional research. He currently manages all research laboratory development projects for the College of Engineering at the Georgia Institute of the TECHNOLOGY. The College of Engineering occupies over 1 million square feet of research space distributed across 37 separate buildings. In 2018, the College of Engineering research activities exceeded $209 million.

Mr. Stoutamire formerly was an operations director for the Mace Group, one of the world's leading project and program management firms. At Mace, Mr. Stoutamire was responsible for selling and managing project/program management engagements nationally.

Mr. Stoutamire spent the first ten years of his career as a military officer in the US Army Corps of Engineers. During his military service, he supervised a wide variety of new construction, renovation, and facilities maintenance projects in the continental United States, the Middle East, the Far East, and the Pacific basin.

After military service, Mr. Stoutamire entered private practice in suburban Maryland, serving for three years as VP of Construction for a single- and multi-family residential developer where he was responsible for all site development design and construction and for all trade procurement, scheduling, and production. Mr. Stoutamire then moved to Atlanta to join Draper & Associates, a construction program management and scheduling firm. While with Draper, he helped manage the Georgia Board of Regents' 4-year, $210 million program to prepare Ga Tech to host the Olympic Village for the 1996 Olympic Games.

Following the 1996 Olympic Games, Cushman & Wakefield, one of the world’s largest commercial real estate services firms, recruited Mr. Stoutamire to be the Director of Project Management for Atlanta and the Southeast. During his ten years at Cushman & Wakefield, Mr. Stoutamire was responsible for marketing, selling, and managing corporate project/program management engagements to clients throughout the southeastern United States.

Mr. Stoutamire is a distinguished graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York. He holds advanced degrees in engineering from the University of Florida (Civil Engineering and Construction Management) and an MBA from Emory University.