A Bumper Crop of Change in Florence Agriculture
Published Oct 17, 2007
Corn is filling more Florence County fields.
It would be ironic if tobacco is used someday to combat human diseases – perhaps even cancer.
The Pee Dee Research and Education Center at Clemson University – on 2,300 acres in Florence and Darlington counties – currently is involved in an agrigenetics program that is studying ways to produce plant-made pharmaceuticals. The land in this region has always been an ideal place to grow tobacco, so it is logical that the Pee Dee facility is conducting research into alternative ways to use that abundant crop.
“We can grow tobacco here as high as an elephant’s eye,” says George R. Askew, regional director of the Pee Dee Research and Education Center, located on Pocket Road. “The crop is easy to work with, we are experts in growing it and it’s a large plant for conducting research.”
Askew says studies already show that genetically altered tobacco can reduce poisonous mercury levels in soil.
“If you ‘google’ the term ‘transgenic tobacco,’ you will find several potential ways that tobacco can help mankind,” he says. “Hopefully, the faculty members here at Pee Dee will discover some of those breakthroughs.”
The tobacco research is just one example of how much agriculture is changing in and around Florence County. In fact, a crop that has sprung onto the scene over the last 10 years is cotton, which was almost nonexistent in this area beforehand.
“You have to realize that tobacco farming was king around here until about 15 years ago – farmers didn’t need to grow anything else,” Askew says. “So now, cotton has become a viable alternative. We at the Pee Dee Center are also working in the biotechnology of cotton, seeing if we can improve fiber counts and the overall strength of the crop.”
Meanwhile, Askew says the center is also involved with researching soil erosion, new crops, agricultural engineering and how to operate farms in increasingly residential areas.
“We are looking into areas such as growing crops with higher value per acre, keeping fertilizer to a minimum, increasing crop volume, growing the correct varieties of cotton and tobacco, and improved irrigation,” he says. “Farming is still a force in Florence, but it’s changing. It is modernizing.”
Joe W. King, executive director of the Florence County Economic Development Partnership, concurs that agriculture is still vital to the local economy but in a different way than during tobacco’s heyday.
“Farming around here has become quite diverse,” King says. “Some of the farmers who got out of tobacco are now growing corn, beans, pecans, peaches, cattle or hogs. A few years ago, there weren’t many peanut farmers, but that industry is big here nowadays. The same goes for chicken and turkey houses.”
King adds that the sod and turf industry is also burgeoning, as new subdivisions and golf courses are being added to the county all the time.
“There are also some interesting agribusinesses that have started up, such as East Coast Erosion Blankets,” he says. “They use remnants of wheat to produce erosion-control blankets, and their production plant is a former tobacco warehouse.
“In addition, there is a working rice plantation in this region. Those are just two of the many examples of agricultural diversity occurring these days in Florence County.”
Story by Kevin Litwin
Photo by Stephen Cherry
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