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South Carolina Background

  South Carolina is rich in colonial and civil war history.  We’re known for our beautiful beaches and world renowned golf courses.  And while tourism contributes greatly to the state’s economy-it’s agriculture that sustains it.

  In 1900, South Carolina’s population was a little over a million people and a large majority, about 90%, lived and worked on a farm.  At last count-we’re closing in on 4 and a half million residents with fewer than half of us living in farm areas.  But, while the number of farms has gone down, the productivity of farmers has gone up.  Today, like their counterparts in the rest of the country, each farmer produces enough to feed 129 people.

  Our family farmers are second in the amount of tobacco raised in the United States and second only to California in the production of fresh peaches.  We rank sixth in peanut production and ninth in turkey production.  We also produce a lot of corn, cotton, soybeans, eggs and nursery and greenhouse products.

  Here at the beginning of the 21^st Century-farming continues to be a special way of life.  Our farmers care for the environment, protect their land and water resources, and nurture their livestock.  More and more younger farmers are raising their families on the farm and they’re bringing with them the latest in technology and efficiency.

Darla Moore

  That rich cultural past and promising future in South Carolina’s ag-economy is just one of the things that attracted the attention of one of the nation’s most powerful businesswoman. 

  As chairman of a non-profit public policy organization, The Palmetto Institute, South Carolina native Darla Moore-who’s from the tobacco-producing region, known as the Pee Dee area of South Carolina, has thrown her support behind research to better South Carolina’s economy.

  Darla Moore says “The economy of South Carolina is a composite of a mix of industries we have within the state.  Agriculture happens to be historically the most powerful one.  But also ironically, it’s going to be, in my opinion, one of the most powerful economic engines of this state in the future.  It’s so much engrained in our culture and has been on it’s back for so many decades, with manufacturing, and then technology and that we…seems things have lost their way economically.  But given what’s happened and is happening in the globe, agriculture’s going to have a resurgence, I think, like we’ve may never have seen in our lifetime.”

  Moore says the agribusiness community is more collectively focused on the global picture and how South Carolina farmers might play an active roll-globally-something South Carolina farmers will have to do, she says, to be sustainable into the future.

  And why is one of the nation’s most powerful businesswomen investing her time in the family farmers of South Carolina?  Darla Moore says it’s because who she is and where she came from:

  “Well, you can cut it down pretty quickly, is that it’s the home.  This is my home.  And I’ve always had a very powerful sense of place.  I attribute it to where I come from.  It’s also becoming a lost characteristic in many parts of the country; that need for community, that longing for a place, for a family, for a….it’s lost and I see a lot of younger people that don’t have quite the sense of comfort.  Confidence, that actually comes from having that deep sense of, ‘I’ve got a place in this world.’”.

  To learn more about these topics, check the Palmetto Institute’s website at www.palmettoinstitute.org.

Cooking Segment: Collards With Color 
 (Featured recipe in the show)

• 1 pound collards
• 1 cup water
• 1 can chicken broth

Cook greens in a pot until the crispness of the collards is gone. Drain collards.

• 3 tablespoons of Extra Virgin Olive Oil in skillet
• 1 medium sized red bell pepper
• 5 oz. of chopped yellow onion

Stir-fry until onions become opaque.
Mix collards into skillet and stir.

• A pinch of pepper
• A pinch of sugar
• A pinch of salt

Simmer until the bell pepper gets a little dark. 
Remove from heat and serve.

“Peachy Keen”

  What do automobiles and peaches have in common?  Strange question.  Well one day your automobile might just run off of peaches.  South Carolina Farm Bureau partners with Clemson University, the state’s leading agricultural research institution.  And there’s research underway that would take low quality peaches and turn those into hydrogen gas-the fuel of the future.

The nation is going to need a number of alternative energy sources if we’re ever going to move past our dependence on oil.  Clemson scientists and engineers are working on just that.  Hydrogen gas can be one of those alternative fuel sources.

  Hydrogen gas can be produced by certain bacteria.  This bacteria can take agricultural by-products and convert it to hydrogen gas.  Scientists have found that by using waste peaches, for instance, they can produce the hydrogen gas. 

  Currently in South Carolina, 200 million pounds of peaches are produced each year, but 10% of that crop is wasted.  By using these bacterial cultures, they can convert that waste resource into an energy, and provide benefit to the agricultural producer. 

  We have a long way to go to replace our use of fossil fuels with alternative energy, but at Clemson University they are working on developing the technologies to produce these fuels in an environmentally sound manner, that’s also economical, and provides a benefit to the South Carolina agricultural producers.

  (Courtesy: Clemson University)

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