SC’s farmers, workers and rural communities will benefit from new farming project

Over the next two years, several hundred acres of land near Early Branch, S.C., will be transformed into greenhouses for farming.

Using recycled rainwater and high-tech climate controls, farming companies will grow tomatoes, leafy greens, berries and other crops safely and sustainably; meanwhile, another company locating at the site will process and package some of this produce into salad mixes, salsas and more.

And with Interstate 95 just a few miles away, trucks will easily distribute this locally grown food around the state and beyond.

On Sept. 2 we announced the $314 million project called the Agriculture Technology Campus, which will create more than 1,500 jobs in Hampton County.

This will provide jobs for the region and benefits for all South Carolina consumers with locally grown produce coming from our backyard and not from California and Mexico.

Impressive team

I have called it the Boeing of agriculture; not just because it’s big, but because it can be a catalyst for other agribusiness growth in the Palmetto State.

When Boeing selected North Charleston in 2009, other businesses began converging on the state from across the world, helping create a local supply chain for the aerospace giant.

The Agriculture Technology Campus can have the same impact for farming.

The Agriculture Technology Campus project brings together two highly respected indoor farming companies, Mastronardi Produce and Clear Water Farms — as well as LiDestri Food and Drink, which is known in the agriculture industry as a co-packer.

South Carolina’s own GEM Opportunity Zone Fund, an investment company based in Aiken, has brought together this impressive group.

It’s going to be quite a team on this campus!

Valuable addition

The Agriculture Technology Campus is poised to attract other businesses, too, from packaging manufacturers to shipping companies.

And in the years to come LiDestri will be calling on South Carolina farmers to grow crops for its various other product needs.

There are already conversations underway between the Agriculture Technology Campus team and local farmers regarding future phases of this project. In other words this project doesn’t threaten our traditional farming; it’s just quite an addition to it.

The majority of our crops will always be grown outdoors; agribusiness is already South Carolina’s largest industry and it’s growing all the time.

The Agriculture Technology Campus will push it to the next level, helping us meet the ever-growing consumer demand for locally grown produce year-round.

Indoor farming

The high-tech indoor farming approach known as Controlled Environment Agriculture isn’t new to South Carolina; great farming companies like Charleston- and Columbia-based Vertical Roots and Greer’s Tyger River Smart Farm are already successfully employing this technique.

What’s unique about the Agriculture Technology Campus is the scale, as well as the co-location of several well-regarded companies.

At the South Carolina Department of Agriculture, we recognized the potential of Controlled Environment Agriculture a few years back.

We commissioned a study to explore bringing this technique to South Carolina, and in 2018 we visited the Netherlands, a world leader in greenhouse farming.

The Netherlands is smaller than South Carolina, yet it is the world’s second highest exporter of food — and it farms indoors.

We were looking for the right opportunity for a major Controlled Environment Agriculture project to invest in South Carolina — and when GEM Opportunity Zone Fund CEO Zeb Portanova and his partners came along, we knew this was the one.

The Agriculture Technology Campus project can be a transformative one.

I hope you’ll join me in imagining all the ways that this new-age agriculture can boost South Carolina’s farmers, workers and rural communities.

Hugh Weathers is South Carolina’s commissioner of agriculture.

This story was originally published September 17, 2020 at 7:15 AM.