South Carolina’s peanut industry is growing in more than acreage. In recent weeks South Carolina peanut growers via the National Peanut Council and the South Carolina Peanut Board have donated nearly 20,000 jars of peanut butter to state and international charities.

Following the recent earthquake in Haiti, South Carolina growers shipped 15,000 jars of peanut butter made from the state’s peanuts to the troubled island nation.

Answering a call for more nutritional state-grown products, South Carolina growers more recently donated over 4,000 jars of state-produced peanut butter to CCMO, an Orangeburg, S.C.,-based food bank.

Richard Rentz, a South Carolina peanut farmer and chairman of the South Carolina Peanut Board says the smiles on the faces of the children of Haiti in video made by relief workers is reward enough for South Carolina growers.

“In addition to being the right thing to do, giving our products to the people who need them the most provides positive publicity for peanuts and for the industry as a whole,” Rentz concludes.