It’s been a good start to the season in South Carolina, says Michael Cranford, executive director for the South Carolina Specialty Crop Growers Association.
“In the last few years, we have had some late freezes that impacted blueberry and peach crops, but this year the weather has been pleasant, and crops have been hitting the market in good numbers,” he said.
Current growing season
Cranford says South Carolina growers are hitting peak strawberry season, with blueberries and blackberries following suit.
“Early peach varieties are being sold and that production will continue to ramp up as we enter the summer months alongside other summer crops like peppers, watermelon and squash,” he said.
It’s a similar start to the season in North Carolina, says Matt Solana, vice president for operations and supply chain for Jackson Farming Co. in Autryville, N.C., which nearly wrapped up its spring broccoli season in part to a warmer-than-normal start to this growing season.
“[It was] much warmer earlier in 2024 and thus the earlier setting of melons and the earlier harvest of broccoli on the spring planting,” he said. “It will remain to be seen how the summer season progresses with Mother Nature, especially with the storms of late affecting the Midwest all the way to us in North Carolina.”
Solana said spring broccoli season typically ends the last two weeks of May or the first week of June. The transplant of cantaloupes started about a week earlier than normal, and he expects the first harvest to start around June 20.
Solana said the company transplanted its honeydew and watermelons early with the warm spring. He estimates the first harvest of the farm’s honeydew will be around the first part of July. He also expects seedless and watermelon with seeds to start harvesting around the last week of June.
The farm is still using sweetpotatoes in storage currently, Solana said, with crews starting to plant this fall’s crop. Solana said he expects harvest to begin in late August or early September.
Solana said early numbers show an increase in watermelon production for North Carolina growers this year, with cantaloupe remaining level. Spring broccoli production remained the same, he said, and he’ll have a better handle on the fall planting later in the summer.
“With sweetpotatoes just starting to get transplanted, it is hard to put a final number to the acreage, but it is expected to be the same or slightly more than 2023,” he said.
Challenges
Growing fresh produce in the Carolinas isn’t without its challenges, says Solana, Cranford and Lee Wicker, director of the North Carolina Growers Association. All three say labor is a major concern for growers in both states.
“Most specialty crops are still handpicked without a lot of mechanization involved, and it is a job that requires intensive work at times,” Cranford said. “It doesn’t matter if you talk to a larger farmer utilizing the H-2A system or a small farmer at your local farmers market; they all mention labor as a consistent challenge.”
Wicker says the increased cost of farming also presents a huge challenge for growers in North Carolina.
“Our problem is that it’s so expensive to farm,” he said. “High inputs, high labor costs, high interest rates. It’s getting harder for the farmers to borrow the capital they need and more expensive when they can borrow it. We’ve seen some major players, major sweetpotato operations fold and exit in the last two or three years.”
Wicker says many growers in North Carolina plant both tobacco and sweetpotato as the seasons are complementary. However, many growers opted to expand sweetpotato acres as the tobacco market waned. Wicker estimates 2021 to be the largest sweetpotato acreage of about 130,000. Since then, the acreage has started to drop to 85,000 in 2022 and 80,000 in 2023.
“Early estimates show the numbers — 80,000 — from last year might be up slightly over again annually,” he said.
Wicker says it’s like watching a glacier melt.
“You can’t see it melt, but you look at satellite photos 25 years apart, and [the acreage] is going away,” he said. “The shifting production has been going on for years, but it’s speeding up.”
Cranford says growers in South Carolina also face similar challenges.
“The cost of land is increasing in rural areas due to development, and this can make it difficult for farmland to stay in families or for new farmers to acquire it,” he said.
Cranford says the state offers several resources to ensure land devoted to specialty crops remains in agriculture. He points to the South Carolina Farm Link program that connects landowners with beginning or expanding growers to keep the land in farming, a private land trust from the South Carolina Farm Bureau. In April, Gov. Henry McMaster signed the Working Agricultural Lands Preservation Act, which allows growers to put land into a conservation easement for up to 50% of its easement value.
Solana says labor, increased cost of farming, contending with government regulations on top of the unpredictability of working with Mother Nature all add up. But the North Carolina Department of Agriculture provides assistance to help ease the burden.
Opportunities
Cranford says it’s not all doom and gloom for specialty crop growers in South Carolina. The state’s growers are uniquely positioned to capitalize on consumers’ interest in where their fresh produce comes from.
“Since the pandemic, and prior to it, there has been a growing trend among consumers to know where their food is coming from and to buy as local as possible,” he said. “South Carolina is not the largest state, but we punch above our weight. We can produce a wide variety of produce throughout the year, and our growers are committed to putting out the highest-quality produce.”
Solana, too, says that Jackson Farming Co.’s location helps East Coast retailers fill the produce department as crops transition from one Southeast state to the next.
“We have the opportunity to not only grow and distribute to the Northeast, but also to backfill to Florida and Georgia as their seasons wind down for those states, so it puts us in a strategic position for our crop time frame,” he said.
Solana says the company also worked with its retailer partners to help improve shrink and reduce food waste with its products and packs. An example of this, he says, is Eastern cantaloupe sold in bins but also created shrink due to the bin count for smaller stores.
“Most of our retail chain partners now utilize [six-count] cartons, which gives the customer a large melon and reduces the shrink for the retailer,” he said. “The pack size helps limit what is displayed at one time. This has helped shrink/food waste be greatly curtailed and given the customer a better melon to take home.”
