Cuban farmer Fernando Funes left his job as an agronomist about four years ago to live the dream of building a sustainable, organic farm. These days, he’s got 15 employees growing more than two dozen vegetables, organic meat and honey in a profitable farm-to-market business. These kind of farms may offer opportunities for South Carolina, as outlined in today’s news story below.
IN THIS ISSUE
NEWS: Small-scale farming could be boon to S.C.
COMMENTARY, Andy Brack: More energy options are a good deal
SPOTLIGHT: Southeastern Institute of Manufacturing and Technology
MY TURN, Cecelia Brown: Let’s get some judicial independence
FEEDBACK: Send us your letters
SCORECARD: Up for Haley, hot air, Stephen Colbert
NUMBER: Measurements: 39-44-67
QUOTE: That hyphenated fella
S.C. ENCYCLOPEDIA: Civilian Conservation Corps in S.C.
NEWS
Small-scale farming could be a boon to state’s rural areas
By Andy Brack, editor and publisher
SEPT. 11, 2015 | Magnolia Plantation and Gardens director Tom Johnson was so impressed with what he learned about small-scale agriculture in Cuba that he’s going to change two of the popular attraction’s vegetable gardens that are seen by thousands.
“We’re going to work with more heirloom plants, build up the soil and adapt those gardens with the principles we learned there,” said Johnson, whose organization sponsored a group tour in August to the isolated country 90 miles south of Florida.
While the group visited cooperative farms, community gardens and agricultural institutes, the 17-acre farm of agronomist Fernando Funes seemed to be of most interest.
Funes left his academic job about four years ago to start farming on what he called a “human scale.” He and a team that has grown to 15 employees transformed overgrown, barren property about an hour west of Havana into a lush, terraced organic farm that grows two dozen types of vegetables, most of which are sold to area restaurants or markets twice a week. The farm also produces two tons of organic honey that is sold to foreign markets.
Funes said his first year on the farm was the hardest. It took seven months to dig a well by hand through more than 40 meters of rock. The excavated rock was used to build a thatch-covered, open barn for six cows, which produce milk and manure.
These days, there’s an integrated, off-grid energy system that fuels the farm. A solar panel on the barn provides enough power to operate the solar pump on the well. Meanwhile, manure is sluiced daily into a bio-digester that captures methane that fuels a stove in a kitchen that prepares enough food to feed 20 people a day. After the remaining waste breaks down more, it becomes the organic material that nourishes soil in terraced vegetable patches, some shaded from Cuba’s powerful sun with black gauze.
Small-scale farming can work, two say
Funes’ farm in Cuba shows how small-scale farming can work in South Carolina, said Johnson, who grew up on a middle Georgia truck farm.
“If you have a large number of these small farms producing vegetables for the market, not only will it help the local economy, but it will help balance out some of the control of the large corporate farmers,” he said.
Ellie Bomstein, food and agriculture project manager at the S.C. Coastal Conservation League in Charleston, said sustainable, small-scale agriculture has big potential in rural areas as a job creator.
“It has the potential to improve the economic, environmental and cultural health of our rural areas — what we like to call the triple bottom line. It can reinvigorate the rural way of life that defines the culture of South Carolina, and which has been eroding in the face of increasing development and divestment in rural infrastructure.
She noted sustainable agriculture can be labor-intensive, compared to large-scale farms, but that there’s still a chance for it to reenergize rural economies.
“From a conservation standpoint, local and sustainable agriculture can protect animal habitat, improve stream and river health, reduce fossil fuel use, contain sprawl and keep open space where it belongs,” she said. “South Carolina has abundant water, high-quality soil, a 12-month growing season and incredible food culture.
“If we can bring the right training, education and investment to our rural areas, South Carolina can rival all other specialty crop growing regions in the country. It’s going to require lots of collaboration and creativity to combat the efficiencies of the industrial-scale agricultural sector, but we have the land, market and manpower to do it.”
Johnson said small farms like those in Cuba can be profitable if they don’t mimic practices of large farms with heavy mechanization, fertilizer and pesticides. As a result, small farms can offer varieties that aren’t profitable for large farms to consumers, who are increasingly looking at where their food is grown.
And then there’s taste. At large farms, vegetables like tomatoes are often picked green and left to ripen in crates. But small farmers with close ties to consumers and local markets can harvest when a fruit or vegetable is at its best quality, which will provide consumers with a better product.
“There is an opportunity for a small farmer of his [Funes’] size. They can not only survive here but also prosper. We’ve been taught that something that small can’t be profitable. But they can adapt and be profitable. And, he’s not only keeping the produce he provides in his community, but he’s keeping the income and jobs in the community.
“[In Cuba], they’re taking everything back to the grassroots the way gardening was originally done. I wish this country would do more of that — the quality of the food is better.”
- Read more about Funes’ farm in this August story in the Washington Post.
Have a comment? Send to: feedback@statehousereport.com.
COMMENTARYMore energy options are a good deal
By Andy Brack, editor and publisher
SEPT. 11, 2015 | An energy revolution is underway in South Carolina and you may not even realize it. Just look at recent news headlines:
Wind energy. Federal regulators have identified almost 1,200 nautical square miles of the South Carolina coast that have the potential to produce wind energy. Within a decade, depending on the regulatory process, sea-based turbines could be generating power much like offshore wind fields in the North Sea.
Consumer solar. The state office that oversees power-generating issues last week told Statehouse Report it’s ready to guide the expansion of solar power in the state as required by a law passed last year. It won’t be long before churches and consumers can easily lease roof space to generate power through solar panels — and to sell some of it back to utilities when it isn’t used on site.
More nuclear. Despite consumer grumbling about rate hikes forced by cost overruns, South Carolina’s utilities are investing $6.8 billion to build two new nuclear reactors to provide cleaner energy. The reactors, originally set to start next year but pushed back to 2020, will add capacity to South Carolina’s power generation and help offset closures of dirtier, coal-burning plants that have been mothballed.
Efficiencies. Despite gas being at record low prices now, energy-efficient hybrid cars and natural-gas-powered buses continue to gain momentum. Consumers also are embracing energy efficiencies, such as moving away from incandescent bulbs to fluorescent, or more recently, LED bulbs.
“South Carolina is turning a corner on clean energy,” said Hamilton Davis, energy program director at the S.C. Coastal Conservation League in Charleston. “We have already reduced carbon emissions dramatically over the past decade due to coal plant retirements and energy efficiency.
“Now we are anticipating an abundance of new solar resources to come online, as well as more aggressive energy efficiency investments that will help consumers lower their electric bills.”
For Mike Couick, president and CEO of the Electric Cooperatives of South Carolina, what’s happening with energy across the state has been more of a continuing evolution than a revolution.
“We have historically witnessed energy evolutions occurring within the context of the latest and greatest — but certainly not equivalent — fuel choices: wood to peat, peat to coal, coal to kerosene, kerosene to other fossil fuel derivatives (gas, diesel and natural gas), fossil fuels to nuclear and, then, nuclear to renewables such as solar and wind,” he said. “These transitions most often have been driven by a combination of technology, economics and regulation.
But more change, he agrees, is coming — particularly for consumers in the next decade.
“The evolution will be accelerated by an increased capacity of information technology and micro-applications which shift options to behind the meter, that is, on the customer side of the meter,” Couick said, adding that a revolution could occur with big advances in energy storage, two-way communication between a utility and consumer and market-based trading of electricity between consumers and utilities.
“A utility’s survival will depend upon its shift from a command and control model to one supporting increased consumer product diversity. Those utilities that resist will fail.”
At Santee Cooper, the state’s largest power generator, boosting alternative energy sources and conservation have been strategic goals for nearly a decade. In 2001, the utility opened its first renewable Green Power station and now includes the state’s largest solar farm. Six years later, Santee Cooper’s board set a policy to meet 40 percent of consumer energy needs by 2020 with non-greenhouse gas-emitting resources, renewable energy, conservation and energy efficiency.
“That 2007 goal has really mapped our activity since, including constructing two new emissions-free nuclear power units; increasing our renewable energy generation by 400 percent; and launching an aggressive energy efficiency program that helps customers save more energy every year,” said company spokesman Mollie Gore. The utility, for example, recently generated 80 percent of its power by coal. By 2021, that amount is expected to drop to a third, she said.
Bottom line: Consumers will have lots of options for transforming their mix of energy sources — from rooftop and community solar to solar leasing, home batteries, more energy efficiency and nimbler utilities.
Andy Brack is editor and publisher of Statehouse Report. Send feedback to: feedback@statehousereport.com.
IN THE SPOTLIGHTSoutheastern Institute of Manufacturing and Technology
The public spiritedness of our underwriters allows us to bring Statehouse Report to you at no cost. In today’s issue, we showcase the Southeastern Institute of Manufacturing and Technology, which is the Southeast’s premier technical service provider and training facility for industry. SiMT’s mission is to provide customers with strategic training and manufacturing technology solutions that maximize workforce productivity in advanced manufacturing environments. SiMT’s state-of-the-art facilities are located in Florence, S.C., on a 146-acre campus adjacent to Florence-Darlington Technical College.
- Learn more here: SiMT.com.
Let’s get judicial independence
By Cecilia Brown
SEPT. 11, 2015 | If South Carolina does it one way, and most other states along with the federal government do it another way, we might wonder how likely it is that South Carolina is right and everybody else is wrong.
Consider the way we install judges. In effect, the legislature unilaterally elects them.
The South Carolina Judicial Merit Selection Commission is made up of 10 individuals. All ten are lawmakers or people appointed by lawmakers. The Commission uses its own criteria to screen candidates and narrow down to a maximum of three applicants per judicial position. The whole legislature then votes on these candidates. Throughout this process, the governor has no say on how or who these candidates for the judiciary are.
Imagine if this were the case at the federal level. Imagine if Congress unilaterally elected judges, and the president had nothing at all to do with the process. Nobody would trust the court to challenge the constitutionality of laws passed by Congress.
Yet that’s exactly what happens in South Carolina. What we have, in essence, is one branch’s domination of another – a blatant violation of the principle of the separation of powers.
It’s hardly surprising, therefore, that South Carolina judges seem frequently to rule in the legislature’s favor. State laws are rarely struck down as unconstitutional. State lawmakers might think that’s because they only pass constitutional bills. Others – I think more logically – might think it has something to do with the fact that judges owe their careers to the lawmakers responsible for the laws whose constitutionality they’ve been asked to judge.
How should we install our judges, then? Some states use popular elections to choose judges – a system widely and correctly criticized for politicizing the judiciary. Most others – together with the federal system – empower the executive to nominate judges and the legislature to confirm them. That is the only way to avoid the legislature’s domination, on one hand, and politicization of the judiciary, on the other.
In recent years, the South Carolina judiciary system has drawn the legitimate criticism that it promotes “inbreeding.” At one point in the mid-1990s, for instance, more than half of circuit court judges and all five Supreme Court justices had served in the General Assembly prior to being elected to the bench. The case isn’t so different now.
Five judges have filed to fill the seat on the South Carolina Supreme Court that Justice Costa Pleicones is vacating in January when he becomes chief justice. At the same time, nearly 50 will be reviewed for an at-large Circuit Court seat. All the decisions on these judicial seats will be made by people you’ve likely never heard of and can’t vote for – legislative leaders and their appointees. The governor, whom you can vote for, should play an equal role in these decisions. But she will play virtually no role at all.
Is reforming South Carolina’s system just a dream? Not really. There are two bills now in General Assembly that would take significant steps toward creating an independent judiciary. Either of these bills would eliminate the unilateral power of the General Assembly to control the judicial branch by requiring the governor to nominate judges with advice and consent from the Senate.
A few lawmakers – especially the sponsors of these and similar bills – see the gravity of the problem. Let’s hope that number grows.
Cecelia Brown is an intern and investigative researcher at the S.C. Policy Council. She attends the University of South Carolina.
FEEDBACKSend us a letter
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- Send your letters to: feedback@statehousereport.com
Up for Haley, hot air and Colbert
Thumbs up
Haley. Congratulations to Gov. Nikki Haley on improved poll numbers among Democrats and African Americans. See what can happen if you work more across the aisle?
Continental Tire. Great to hear Sumter’s tire plant is adding 900 jobs to increase annual production to 8 million tires.
Hot air. We’ve always known there is a lot of hot air IN South Carolina. Now we know there’s a bunch offshore — to potentially power lots of wind turbines to generate electricity.
Colbert. Hats off to Charleston’s own Stephen Colbert for a successful kick-off to a new late night show on CBS.
S.C. State. Some good news for the university that’s been troubled over the past few years. Enrollment and revenue numbers are up more than projected. More.
In the middle
Area code. Some change is hard, such as having to dial new area codes. That’s what’s happening in the Pee Dee where a new 854 area code soon will overlap with the 843 area code. For everyone in the Pee Dee and Lowcountry, it will mean dialing either area code all of the time — even with local calls. More.
Thumbs down
Lybrand. Thumbs down to Charleston Register of Mesne Conveyance Charlie Lybrand, a Republican, for all of the bellyaching. Despite what he says about Democrats complaining about his campaigns being sour grapes, it really sounds like he has the sour grapes — for being caught violating an ethics law.
NUMBERS39-44-67
Those are approval numbers among Democrats, blacks and Republicans for Gov. Nikki Haley, according to a poll by Public Policy Polling earlier this month. What’s interesting is that Haley’s numbers are up more than 20 points among Democrats and blacks since February — 17 percent to 39 percent among Democrats and 24 to 44 among blacks — but down nine points to 67 percent among Republicans. The likely culprit: Removing the Confederate flag from Statehouse grounds. More.
The hyphenated fella
“In 1998, that letter went out not as a generalized mailer, but to my friends with a self-addressed envelope, looking for a donation to my campaign. Every four years, this letter went out to friends. After this last election in 2014, the hyphenated fella [Charleston County Democratic Party Chair Brady Quirk-Garvan], he decided that this was a terrible violation of the ethics law that this letter that had been going out for the past 17 years had an office number on it.”
— Charleston County Register of Mesne Conveyance Charlie Lybrand, who was formally charged by the State Ethics Commission for violating state law by using “government personnel or facilities for campaign purposes.” The complaint by Quirk-Garvan, Lybrand says, is sour grapes following a Democratic loss in 2014. But Quirk-Garvan replied, “It’s not oversight when ethical issues come up multiple times. I think this is just a guy who got used to being in office and figured everything was his.” More.
S.C. ENCYCLOPEDIACivilian Conservation Corps
S.C. Encyclopedia | President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) was a New Deal federal initiative that put millions of unemployed men to work on conservation projects. Initially known as the Emergency Conservation Work program, the CCC represented an unprecedented effort to combine social welfare with conservation on public and private lands. Between 1933 and 1942 South Carolina’s CCC camps employed more than 49,000 workers, many between the ages of 18 and 25. In countless hours of backbreaking and often tedious work, CCC workers fought soil erosion and wildfires, created a state parks system, built roads and trails, erected fire towers, and carried out extensive reforestation projects. Wages sent home by CCC workers helped many families weather the Great Depression.
One of the CCC’s most notable accomplishments was its rustic-style architectural legacy. As a national style, rustic architecture developed in resort and park settings during the early twentieth century. It combined naturalistic landscape design and elements of the Shingle, Adirondack Great Camp, Prairie, and Craftsman architectural styles. By relying heavily on local materials such as stone and hand-hewn logs, rustic-style buildings appeared as though they had been constructed by frontier craftsmen using only primitive hand tools in harmony with natural surroundings and local building traditions. CCC rustic landscaping emphasized use of native plant species, curvilinear roads and paths, and the creation of romantic settings that encouraged outdoor recreation and exploration of nature.
In South Carolina, the CCC worked with state and federal agencies, especially the National Park Service and the U.S. Forest Service, to develop 17 state parks, several fish hatcheries, and national forest recreation areas. All of these sites exemplify rustic design principles. Buildings at Oconee, Table Rock and Paris Mountain state parks and the Walhalla fish hatchery reflect the surrounding mountain environment and pioneer building traditions. Several cabins, picnic shelters, and a lodge are built of hand-hewn chestnut logs. The Paris Mountain bathhouse, a low-lying stone building, rises out of the ground, fully integrated with the surrounding landscape. On the coast, several CCC buildings that are no longer standing also reflected their surroundings. At Hunting Island, the CCC constructed a picnic shelter out of local palmetto logs and thatch, and the former Myrtle Beach State Park bathhouse featured a massive, plantation-inspired portico. In the central part of the state, many structures at Poinsett State Park incorporated locally quarried coquina rock.
The CCC’s most important legacy was the role it played in the transformation of South Carolina’s rural landscape. By the 1930s, intensive cotton farming and logging had left much of the state’s land devastated by deforestation, fires, gullies and sheet erosion. The CCC began the process of land restoration by building hundreds of miles of terraces and planting more than 56 million tree seedlings. The state’s extensive forests of today can be traced back to the pioneering conservation efforts and the visionary planning of the CCC.
– Excerpted from the entry by Al Hester. To read more about this or 2,000 other entries about South Carolina, check out The South Carolina Encyclopedia by USC Press. (Information used by permission.)
CREDITSEditor and Publisher: Andy Brack
Senior Editor: Bill Davis
Contributing Photographers: Michael Kaynard, Linda W. Brown
We Can Do Better, South Carolina!