About 35 miles south of its home of Orangeburg, S.C., South Carolina State University’s 1890 Research & Extension Research Farm is gradually taking shape. The farm, located near the small town of Olar, will serve a dual purpose as a training ground for students and as a place for outreach to the state’s minority farmers.

The farm is in Bamberg County, a significant agricultural county known for watermelon production. Other crops grown in the area include wheat, corn, soybeans and sweet potatoes.

Hemp, for industrial uses, is the farm’s primary current crop. There are also remnants of a perennial peanut crop inherited from the farm’s previous owners. Researchers hope to find a use for that. Chickpeas, collards and cabbage are among the other crops farm developers hope to add in the coming years.

The farm is a definite work in progress. Plans call for construction of greenhouses and a research facility. Current buildings include an office and an equipment storage building.

Zachary Jordan, the farm’s first manager, began working in February following his graduation from Clemson University. While in school, he spent five years at Clemson’s  LaMaster Dairy Farm. Since then, he’s been busy getting things under way at the new farm, which is gradually taking shape following a March 2021 groundbreaking.

“I look at it as if I am managing inventory,” he said. “Every one of these plants here has a specific purpose, a specific area where it would be most beneficial. When we have research proposals, it’s my job to figure out how that research is going to be most beneficial.”

Jordan said S.C. State students participated in research this past summer that helped with the hemp project.

 “It’s just amazing to see the passion the students have. They have some new ideas for uses of cannabis. They may have ideas about things that I may not see, just because they have different backgrounds and experience that they are drawing from and that is going to be hugely beneficial for us.”

Right size

Dr. Louis Whitesides, university vice president and executive director of South Carolina State University’s 1890 programs, said the university had its eyes on several sites prior to choosing the Olar location. These ranged up to 1,000 acres but chose acreage closer to that run by most minority farmers.

“We were reminded that most of the farmers we work with have 100 acres or less. In South Carolina, 9,800 or roughly 40% of the 25,000 farmers have 100 or less. That is our clientele. We want them to be able to walk our farm with us and see what is going on. We want to do demonstrations for them, and have them say, ‘hey, this farm looks similar to mine; I can do this too.’”

So, the university chose the 200-acre site where up to 30 trials can simultaneously take place.

“It’s intimate enough that they can see that it’s not a huge, mechanized operation that they can’t see themselves in,” Whitesides said. “That’s how we settled on this farm. It was a nursery. They did perennial peanuts, and it was a hay farm.”

Long-time South Carolina Extension agent Mark Nettles, now sustainable agriculture and natural resources agent for the Midlands region, works closely with Jordan on the farm. He said cotton was grown on the acreage long ago, and later watermelons. For several years, there was nothing grown on the land and the owners eventually decided to sell.

“We have the perennial peanuts here that we inherited from them,” Nettles said. “We haven’t done a whole lot with them yet. We want to get them back to the point of being able to harvest them, and do some trials, and introduce farmers to this crop. I think we could make it a crop in this part of the state.”

Florence Anorou is an assistant professor at S.C. State and director of the 1890 hemp research initiative. She said one of the farm’s objectives related to hemp will be to transfer knowledge to minority farmers in the state.

“Hemp is a re-emerging crop and many of the farmers have little knowledge about hemp, not only about genetic, but also production and other things associated with it. This will be a place for them to come and see what we are doing so they can have hands-on knowledge of what we are doing. Minority farmers are important in everything we do.”

Long-time agricultural consultant Joshua Idassi joined S.C. State University 1890 Research & Extension in 2020 and serves as the state program leader for sustainable agriculture and natural resources. He plans to introduce a variety of methods on the farm, including construction of high tunnels to extend the growing season for some crops.

“With high tunnels, we can have vegetables growing into the late fall,” Idassi said. “High tunnels are for small-space agriculture.”

Idassi also has plans for integrating silvopasture (the practice of integrating trees, forage and grazing of livestock on the same land) on the property.

Whitesides estimates the number of minority farmers in South Carolina to be around 2,500. A priority is to solidify a database of farmers.

“We are trying to pull together all of the farmers,” Whitesides said. “There are some that are not registered with the Farm Service Agency. They don’t have a farm number, but they are farmers. We also have part-time farmers, who have a regular job, but they farm evenings and weekends.”

New Ag college

An ongoing challenge is attracting young people to farming, and the university is taking a different approach, he said.

“Our college of agriculture just got started, but we have 42 Ag students, and 16 coming up this year, putting us close to 60,” Whitesides said. “We are seeing that growth because when we talk to students, we are trying to make agriculture sexy again. It’s not just about getting up at 4 a.m. and working all day. Students are into technology, and there is a lot of technology involved in farming now.”

William H. Whitaker, Jr.  is the acting dean for the new college, officially known as the College of Agriculture, Family and Consumer Sciences. He said the university used to have a school of agriculture, but it hadn’t been active in more than 50 years.

“The university wanted to go in a new direction in terms of focusing more on academic programs that are geared toward the food and agricultural sciences,” Whitaker said.  “With that, there have always been many conversations about developing a college of agriculture and consumer sciences, but it did not come into fruition until July of 2021. That is when the board of trustees approved the college.”

The farm, Whitaker said, will serve as a research and experimental platform for students during their college years. This might include an internship at the farm, or work with a faculty member on a research project.

“The farm will interface with the academic program,” Whitaker said.

Opportunities for students will stretch beyond farming, he said. Some might work for the USDA, some make work in private industry, some will become Extension agents, while others might work in cooperative programs between farms and universities.

Whitesides noted there are many more jobs today in agriculture than just traditional farming. He cited positions in artificial intelligence, computer science and engineering.

“You don’t have to be a row crop farmer or a livestock farmer to be in the agricultural field,” he said.

Whiteside cited as an example two scholarships assigned during late spring to students studying agribusiness this fall.

“They are not going to be farmers, but they are going to be in the farm industry. That is the approach we are taking.”