RIDGEWAY — Displaced furniture workers harvest more than 5,000 fish every day from this farm near Martinsville Speedway.
They pump them into white tanks that — like some of the chairs they used to assemble — are hauled in 18-wheeler trucks to buyers in Washington, Toronto and points in between.
"I'd drive by and I'd see guys driving with 'Live Fish' on the side of the truck. I was like, 'Man, that looks like it's a fun job,' " former furniture worker Allen Jackson said on a recent morning.
Some 35 people work for Blue Ridge Aquaculture, an 18-year-old company that has become the country's biggest producer in its niche market: indoor-raised tilapia. Innovative businesses such as this one are changing the work force in a region better known for its NASCAR races and manufacturing plants that closed because their production was outsourced.
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