The Carolinas are unique states for growing fresh produce. The region represents a lot of climate and topographical diversity in a small space. Whether north or south, this diversity forces growers to be creative, adaptable and future-focused to meet evolving consumer demands in the face of sometimes unforgiving settings.
North Carolina boasts several high ranks across different types of fresh produce. It is the nation’s top producer of sweetpotatoes, its official state vegetable, for example. According to 2023 cash receipts (most recent complete USDA data), the state ranked fifth in the nation for blueberries, fresh and processing cucumbers and peanuts; sixth in the nation for other cucumbers, bell peppers and pumpkins; and seventh in the nation for squash and watermelons.
The state’s success with many different produce owes a lot to its physical variety.
“North Carolina is so fortunate and blessed that we have so many different topographies and soil types, as well as climate zones, in our singular state,” said Michelle Grainger, executive director of the North Carolina Sweetpotato Commission.
Producers use this variety to their benefit. The folks at Happy Dirt, a produce distribution company with 16 farmer owners across the state, gave the example of their lettuce farms distributed across the state for strategic purposes.
“We’ve been utilizing the topography of having some mountain farms to extend our season,” said Alex Borst, purchasing manager for Happy Dirt. “We’ve got a good, solid, late-April-to-mid-June lettuce program now.”
Not to be outdone, South Carolinian growers take pride in the variety their state brings to the southeast.
“We are a small state, but we do so much,” said Eva Moore, communications director for the South Carolina Department of Agriculture, adding that the state has a broad produce portfolio. “And, of course, we’re the ‘Tastier Peach State.’”
In 2023, South Carolina was second in the nation for peaches, sixth for peanuts and eighth for watermelons. That said, the state also grows crops rarely tracked by USDA, such as turnip greens and collards.
The South Carolinian claim of being the tastier peach state stems from its unique climate. Blakely Atkinson, executive director of the South Carolina Peach Council, explained that peach trees need a certain number of chill hours to set fruit and heat to make that fruit sweet. South Carolina gets that, she said, with hot, humid summers and cool winters with a lot of moisture in the air.
Weather woes add up
Produce growers in the Carolinas have been hard-hit lately from a series of extreme weather events. For example, those cold winters needed for peach setting went a bit overboard in 2023 when a late-season cold snap resulted in 70% crop loss.
“That was the state estimation loss,” Atkinson said. “Some people were able to squeak by, but some were hit worse. One of my growers had a 99% crop loss.”
Last year also saw some extreme weather events that greatly affected Carolina producers. Grainger called it a brutal year.
“North Carolina was just battered from the mountains to the sea and everywhere in between,” she said, explaining that right after the sweetpotato crop was transplanted, the state got hit with drought.
“Then we had three storms: Hurricane Debbie, Tropical Cyclone Eight and the tail end of Hurricane Helene,” Grainger said. “We had all the conditions that you could possibly have between the months of June and November, and it netted us a loss of anywhere between 40% to 45% of yield.”
Sim McIver, assistant director of domestic marketing at the North Carolina Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, estimated 2024’s extreme weather cost North Carolina agriculture $5 billion. The disasters wiped out fields and destroyed infrastructure throughout the state.
Some operations were relatively lucky, however. Tendwell Farm co-owner Steven Beltram said that its packing shed was spared. While the company had a lot of equipment damage, it was repairable. The roads and bridges are back in place in the area, and tractor trailers can get in and out of the packing house again.
“We were very fortunate in that none of our fields were permanently damaged,” Beltram said.
Diverse varieties, growing methods
The increased demand for more variety, be that new crops, new growing styles or new varieties of familiar crops, and growers rising to meet that demand was a constant thread across the Carolinas.
“We are seeing producers investing in produce, putting their energy there and diversifying,” Moore said.
She highlighted that vegetable acreage in South Carolina expanded dramatically since the last Census of Agriculture. Taylor Holenbeck, grower services coordinator for Happy Dirt, said there has been a movement in growing organic vegetables in the South, in general.
But the trend for more diversity isn’t just relegated to vegetables. Both McIver and Moore noted growth in berry interest, strawberries specifically in North Carolina and berries overall in South Carolina.
“Berry sales by South Carolina producers more than tripled between 2017 and 2022, from $13 million to $44.3 million,” Moore explained, adding that a group of growers recently founded the South Carolina Small Fruit Growers Association. “Some of our large farms have been adding small fruit to diversify.”
Several of the groups The Packer spoke to highlighted plans for expanding into new crops or expanding existing variety due to increased demand. The farms that Happy Dirt works with planted more acres of organic strawberries this year, for example. Holenbeck said the company is working with smaller farms to grow specialty eggplant, cherry tomatoes and specialty peppers.
“We’re just trying to really up our specialty game with our smaller farms so our larger farms can crank out the volume items we need,” Holenbeck said. “We’re increasing acreage in micro ways on these smaller, hyperspecialty products. That’s been really exciting.”
Consumer interest in new varieties of familiar crops has been strong lately in the Carolinas as well. Interest in sweetpotato varieties is growing, for example, especially for the purple-skinned, white-fleshed murasaki varietal.
Grainger said this push for different varieties started in the culinary world, then got picked up by social media influencers. She also cited the impact of the Netflix’s series “The Blue Zone,” which focused on areas of the world where populations live exceptionally long lives.
“The very first episode of this series was in Japan and within the first few minutes of that episode they were talking about the purple sweetpotato,” she said. “The individuals being interviewed expressed how important that sweetpotato is to their daily diet and they were attributing their longevity to it.”
Sweetpotatoes aren’t the only crop with growing varietal interest from consumers. Atkinson noted that consumers are also inquiring more about different peach varieties.
“We live in a society that is constantly wanting to learn, and consumers are really concerned about where their food is coming from,” she said. “So, they are asking questions and want to be educated on their food, and that’s great.”
A focus on sustainable produce
Expanding into new crops and new varieties aren’t the only ways Carolina growers are trying to serve their consumers better. New, different and more sustainable packaging that caters to customer needs was a frequently cited trend.
“Simplicity and affordability are huge with today’s consumers,” said McIver. “Simple recipes and affordable price options; pre-cut, ready-to -eat produce is gaining popularity. Any kind of value-added time-savers.”
The Nashville, N.C.-based fresh produce packer, shipper and marketer Nash Produce aims to meet those convenience needs.
“That’s where some of these new packaging strategies come in handy,” said Robin Narron, marketing director and sales support for Nash Produce. “For example, if you have a family of two, it’s easy to just grab two sweetpotatoes. But if you have a family of four, you can grab our 4-pack. You don’t have to sort through the bulk bin and worry about different cook times because ours are electronically sized to be as consistent as possible.”
Narron said the company strives to cater to the needs of its customers, be they the end consumer or retail customers.
“We have to do what’s popular in different areas. In some regions, for example, the larger sweetpotatoes are more popular, while in other areas, the smaller size are more popular,” she said. “So, we try to deliver whatever our customer base needs. If it’s something that we don’t have, we try to innovate something that would work for them.”
For Happy Dirt, changes in the way it packages its sweetpotatoes have not only served its customers but also its growers.
“Over the past couple of years, we’ve really worked on our packaged sweetpotato program. Our 3-pound bags have been really successful,” Holenbeck said. “It’s
really helped our farmers, because they can put their smaller potatoes in those bags. Before, they would often just leave them in the field and not even pick them up because they couldn’t sell them. So, we’ve created, not necessarily a new market, but a new market for our farmers.”
Making better use of a harvest through packaging strategies is one way to improve sustainability. Some groups reported addressing sustainability issues directly with packaging, however.
“At Nash Produce, we are constantly working on sustainability projects,” said Narron. Part of this is innovation with packaging materials. “We’re trying to branch out into more eco-friendly packaging materials. Trying to get away from Styrofoam trays and trying to bring in more disposable or biodegradable packaging materials.”
Beltram observed another interesting sustainability-minded trend in his area among his neighbors.
“I don’t know if it’s on account of what we’re doing, but over the past 15 years, a lot of the conventional growers starting to incorporate sustainable practices,” he said.
Beltram said he’s started seeing a lot of conventional growers in his area starting to incorporate cover crops, something the all-organic Tendwell is proud of.
He also spoke about a different sustainability issue: the continuation of agriculture in the area. With Tendwell being a first-generation farm, this is a near-and-dear issue.
“Here in the mountains you see a lot of older folks who have been doing what they’re doing for a long time. As they’re starting to age out and they’re doing less farming, there’s not much of a new generation coming on,” he said. “So, we have a lot of really supportive neighbors. They are really happy about what we’re doing.”
A look to the future
Tendwell is installing an optical sorter to speed up tomato sorting this summer.
“So, that should give our grape tomato pack a little more uniformity as far as sizing and color goes,” Beltram said. “We’re pretty excited about putting that machine in place this summer.”
Happy Dirt is also looking forward to infrastructure changes at its farms.
Borst said the company has been conducting trials on high and low tunnels. The trials have suggested ways tunnels can be used to mitigate the threats of disease and weather, extending their seasons on various specialty crops and increasing the consistency of the crops, said Holenbeck, adding that increasing infrastructure at the farms is a goal this summer.
For South Carolina peaches, the near future will mean spreading the goodness.
“New this year is the expansion of exports,” Atkinson said. “One of our larger farms has already been exporting to Mexico, but there has been expansion this year, and I think that is something that is pretty exciting.”
She added that expansion of export into Canada was also something the South Carolina peach industry is working on. “We’re already up there, but to say that we’re still growing is really something.”
South Carolina at large has also been working on recent and new efforts to connect local growers with consumers. Moore noted the recently launched Certified South Carolina Showcase, which just held its third annual event in late March.
“It grew out of a smaller effort to get growers and buyers in the same room, but we expanded it, and now it’s held at the big convention center here in Columbia,” she said. “It’s producers who are part of our big Certified South Carolina branding program, and they exhibit trade-show style.”
She also said the state is working on a portal for school food authorities to find and connect with local producers.
“Farms and producers that are looking to scale up and be able to serve markets in their communities often are interested in working with schools, so we are going to have an interface where that can happen,” Moore said. “It will be a portal where producers and distributors can list what they have available and their contact information, and on the other side school food authorities can make those connections.”
In both Carolinas, the emphasis on growing research is strong.
“Historically, the South has been largely ignored when it comes to developing varieties for our climate specifically,” Holenbeck explained. That has changed recently with the growing demand for growing produce, especially organic produce, in the southeast.”
“One of the reasons why North Carolina is as strong as we are in sweetpotato production is because of our growers and their close relationship with the research institutions,” Grainger said. She pointed to work at institutions such as North Carolina State University, North Carolina A&T, the University of Mount Olive and across the Cooperative Extension System.
“North Carolina has an incredible Cooperative Extension Program that spans our entire state; all 100 counties have an office,” she said. “Our growers work side by side with individuals from each of these institutions, and they adopt research, they provide facilities and work with those who are trying to promote and progress the industry.”
Research efforts, both public and in private companies, are strong in South Carolina as well to find varieties that work for the state’s climate, Moore said, pointing to examples of heat-tolerant butter beans and peach varieties that can withstand the warmer weather of summers in the South.
“The climate here is, for lack of a better word, very volatile,” Holenbeck said. “To be adaptable within that is very important for our farmers and the longevity and sustainability of growing in the southeast.”
