S1E10: SC Ag Tech & Business Forum 2025 - Value Added
This episode of the South Carolina Ag Tech & Business Forum focuses on Value-Add and Innovation in agriculture. Moderator Robert Etheridge (Owner & President, Mixon Seed Service) leads a panel with Fred West (Former Amick Farms Senior Executive & Founder, West Resources Consulting Firm), Thomas Hunter (Co-President, McCall Farms), and Ben Setzler (Farmer & Owner, Hi Brau Beef). Together, they explore product diversification, processing collaborations, and technology integration as pathways for South Carolina producers to innovate, compete, and thrive.
Date of Event: March 26, 2025
Location: Phillips Market Center, West Columbia, SC
Production Credits:
Introduction: Hannah Mikell
Producer: Kevin Royal
Editor: Kayla Peters
Technical: Trey McAlhany
Music Composer: R.M Davis
Special Thanks:
Transcript:
Cultivate Ag, where ideas take root and innovation grows. Hey y'all, I'm Hannah Michael, your host of Cultivate Ag podcast brought to you by Clemson University's Cooperative Extension Service and CU Katz. Each episode we dig into what's shaping the future of farming in South Carolina and beyond.
Let's get into it. Before closing out our flavorful conversation on fruits, vegetables, and value-added innovations in South Carolina, the panel will share how producers are branching out, getting creative, and increasing profitability through processing, diversification, and tech. Let's talk about growing your operation beyond the basics.
You can look around the room and you'll watch, but this is going to be some tough sledding. I know it's getting late in the day, but the hope you and I both have is we've got great speakers on this panel, so I know there's going to be some good discussions. So I think what I'll do, you kind of watched the flow of the events here already.
What I might do is just set a little bit of context, share some data, and we'll talk about that for maybe a few minutes, and then we'll move into the panel discussion. I've got two or three questions that we'll kind of work our way through. But again, the secret sauce, as you've kind of seen already today, is really your engagement and making sure we're kind of hitting on things that you guys see as being of importance.
Kendall, is Kendall in here? Is he in the hall? Hey, bud.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, just to clarify a few things. I mean, this has been a tag team effort when we started down this path.
Yeah, shoot, two and a half years ago, I guess it was, when this concept first kind of came up. So, yeah, but it is exciting to see this kind of come to fruition. And it.
. . Kathy mentioned that Dr.
Clemmons' presence in the industry council. He was asking for, you know, where do we go if we really want to be good in terms of synergy and getting the university system working together with private industry and making sure we're working on the right things and we've got the right resource plan. And we're just being efficient in doing that.
And what a neat opportunity I had to kind of orient him and that broader board to a lot of things that we typically do pretty well in the Ag world, right? And we work pretty well together. So, just, I just, I want to kind of go back and speak to, kind of speak to that.
And, you know, level setting for this, for this specific discussion around value add. And, you know, you've heard it several times today, right? We've got, as a state, small state, we've come to be quite a desirable place to be, which means houses, which means commerce, which is all good.
And, you know, unfortunately for us, where do most of those houses and warehouses want to start, right? Well, it's level land with no trees. Guess what that happens to be, right?
That's productive ag. So, you know, if I think about, you know, me as a citizen and certainly me as a business owner here at the state, you know, what is our existential threat? It really is that loss of land to development, right?
Yes, we're in tough economic times now. I don't diminish that at all. But again, history shows that's sort of a cyclical thing.
And somebody mentioned we're a natural disaster, a war away, you know, from that changing fairly quickly. This existential threat around loss of productive land is one that once we go down that path, I don't know what you do with thousands of acres of concrete. And it just, it's fairly monolithic in what it does.
And so that's kind of the context that we, as a panel group, sort of got oriented around. And I love, if you were here this morning when Gary Spires was talking, and he said a lot of great things, but the thing that resonated most with me is, you know, we've got a core group of growers that want to be on the land. And what we need to be able to do is kind of keep them as family strong.
And how do we do that? Let's keep those farms strong. And so, again, the intent here is to start a conversation.
And again, it's not like we're going to walk out of here as great as this panel is. And they don't have all the answers, right? Certainly I don't.
But what we hope to do is start a few discussions that will, you know, that will percolate and mature and become the next insert, you know, insert thing here a year from now or three years from now. So it's really the start of a conversation that we hope to get across. So, and I'll share a little bit of data in North Stigpin.
I know Hugh, Commissioner Wills, is going to be with us hopefully later. And if Rachel's here, I promise you he would love to sing Happy Birthday. And we may not want to hear it, but he would be happy to do it if Rachel's still in the room.
But I work with North Stigpin. North was with Commerce for a while and is now helping Hugh and the Department of Ag on some economic development projects. And so, you know, one thing you'll hear, and it's a wonderful, it's a wonderful thing.
And that is ag is the largest industry in the state, right? You hear 50, 52, 53 billion dollar total economic impact. And it's fantastic, right?
That's fantastic. And if you look at, one thing I was interested in is how do we as a state then begin to stack up relative to some other states, you know, around just the value of produce coming off the farm gate. And so, so, so North helped me pull some numbers together.
And if you just benchmark California, if you look at cash receipts coming off the farm, and this is crops and animals, California would be number one in about 60 billion dollars of cash receipt, plant and animal. North Carolina's number nine at 16. Georgia would be number 15 at about 12 and a half billion.
South Carolina would be 35th at 3. 6 billion dollars. So, if you know anything about geography, look at South Carolina, look at the state of California, it's different.
So, we really need to start looking at this in terms of dollars per acre. And so, again, North did his magic math, which was, again, was super helpful. So, if you dollarize those farm gate receipts per acre, South Carolina pencils out at about 1600 dollars of cash receipts per acre.
Where's California? California's about 2500, North Carolina's about 2100, Georgia's about 1250. So, again, the real point out of that is at four and a half billion acres, you know, we're not California, we're not the I states in terms of land mass.
And so, if we really start looking at productivity per acre, we're doing okay. But if you reference North Carolina as a neighbor, and certainly you reference California, that seems to indicate, at least to me, there's some pretty clear things that we could be doing to really get more value on the farm. And again, a few comments that have just kind of bubbled up this afternoon is, you know, that's how we begin to sort of eat the elephant of this loss of ag land.
Because we've got to have a better alternative than 10,000, 20,000 dollar acre development. And the way we do that, again, is to start creating and I think keep more value on the farm. And so, again, many of you know, again, nothing new here, right?
The farmer bag, I think, has done some really good work around economic development over the last several years. And I'll just hit a couple of those points. And so, since January of 24, we've had about $340 million investment in the state of South Carolina.
Yeah. What are we getting from that? It's about $100 million worth of product increase, increased value for products produced here in the state.
About 650 or 700 jobs. And it's gone across a range of products from coal storage to grains to poultry. So, again, there's work taking place there, right?
That's kind of the point. There's some work taking place. If you go back to those numbers, if we're $1,600 an acre, North Carolina's $21, California's $2,400.
Again, there's still some work to do. So, that's really what I wanted to do just in terms of sort of setting context around the discussion. I'm going to start talking a lot less, so just hold with me here just a minute.
We're going to be engaging a great panel here. You'll see, I'll do a bit of introduction and then I'll ask the panel members just to kind of add to what I missed. But hopefully what you see is a good broad brush from industry and the state.
So, we've got basic production represented. We've got poultry production. We've got beef and some row crop as well.
And so, again, we're trying to get a fairly broad brush. Look at this. So, I'll start with Thomas Hunter.
Thomas is to my left. You're right. Yeah, Thomas serves as co-president of McCall Farms.
Overseas, a pretty wide area of responsibility around supply chains and operations. Kind of came to that with a different background, a lot of time spent in health care and some key roles. Clemson grad and a degree from MUSC as well.
So, again, great, great, great resource in the state in terms of basic production. Thomas, anything you'd add to that, that I didn't hit on or expand on? Not only for any of y'all that aren't really familiar with McCall Farms, I mean, we're a vegetable and fruit freezing and canning operation in Effingham, South Carolina.
And we ship our products, you know, all 48 continental United States, do a little bit of exports, but really focus on retail branded products. If you go in the store, you'll see Water Nomes, Glory Foods, Peanut Packs, Ball Peanuts, Popeyes Spinach, Veg All, Roosted Jams. And every bit of what we sell is all produced in the manufacturing facility in Effingham, South Carolina.
You know, we pull products from a wide variety of different states, mainly up and down the East Coast. But, you know, our goal at the end of the day, I mean, it costs a lot of money. Today I'm running green beans that are being grown in Homestead, Florida.
It costs a lot of money to freight green beans from Homestead, Florida. So, you know, increased production in specialty crops in South Carolina and paired up with us, it's a big ask, but it's beneficial to the entire agribusiness community within South Carolina. And we're trying to help lead the way on that.
So, Robert, thank you for having me. I'm looking forward to the conversation. Great.
Thank you. Thank you. So keep moving, Fred West.
So many of you know Fred. Fred, South Carolina native, had a long, productive career with Amen Farms and retired in the summer of 23. And again, sort of like Thomas, had a pretty wide berth of accountability, HR, operations, all the she compliance regulatory functions.
And in his spare time, picked up PR, public relations as well. Since that time, Fred's been working for West Resources, a consulting firm, and is working with the SEDA in the space of market development. So, Fred, glad to have you.
Anything you'd add that I missed? Yeah, it's interesting. The Amen group, some of you might not know, when I started was a one plant operation in Batesburg, South Carolina.
Probably 600 people, maybe processing one shift, about 600,000 birds a week. When I left, we were three plants in three states. We were about 3,000 to 3,500 employees and we processed about 4 million birds a week.
So it's interesting to look back in this discussion today and listen to everybody to go back to when I started, where when you walked out in the plant, it was still pre-printed labels and grease pencils that kind of ran the plant. And when I left, there were iPads everywhere. There was data that just was like a fire hose coming at you.
And then the technology and equipment, how far it's come. It's just, it's amazing to look back and see where we are now. Never thought we'd be where we're at now.
Not sure what that ends up looking like, but pretty excited to be here. So, thanks. Thanks for making time.
And rounding us out, Ben Sassler. And just as a side note, Ben and I had the privilege of being in the first. Palmetto Leaf leadership class.
And so it's been a real pleasure just to get to know Ben over the last few years. If you see Kirby Player, just as a side note, give Kirby a high five on that. He has been a tireless champion to get that going.
I think we're cohort four? Recruiting cohort four. Yeah, okay.
Good deal. So again, you can read the bio, but a few points that draw out, you know, Ben, former owner of Highbrow Beef, specializing in curated beef experiences. And again, if you think about the subject, value add, real marketing, some real cool marketing there, just to kind of call that out.
Now, third generation farmer, Ben's been out on his own and really involved in building a setup for cattle genetics business, cow-calf operation, rural farm. And I'll tell you the other thing, if you're in any industry meeting, particularly as it pertains to soil and water conservation, you're gonna see Ben involved. So we, giving of his time and many talents.
And so Ben, we appreciate you giving us some of that today. So anything you would add to that, Nelson? No, first, appreciate you having us here.
I think this is a good conversation to have. Appreciate everybody being here. I tell everybody all the time, different industries, I've never seen a group of people that will come to a meeting and contribute like people in the agriculture industry.
Not as far as myself, I've had, we're here for value added products. That's one thing I specialize in now, but I've been on both sides of the coin and still am. Brett and I share history in poultry.
My family's been in the poultry business since the 30s. That's kind of where I got my start. But my passion is cattle.
I always say I've been poultry because I like to pay the bills. I'm in cattle because I like cattle. Well, we may, you got the mic, Ben, we'll just pick it up from there.
So we're gonna do a little, I've got about two or three questions. And really this first one is just with some pretty divergent but representative cross section of the state in terms of industry. And kind of talk a little bit about what are you doing today around value add?
And kind of what's working? Cuz we're gonna go to the inevitable, what's not working, that's the second question. What are you doing and what are you seeing pay off today?
Sure, the whole mission of Highbrow, I guess I got a little disillusioned with the cattle industry. Who over here grows cattle or is closely involved in growing cattle? There we go.
Shockingly small number. Thanks, brother. Well, a little more explanation required.
Then when you grow cattle, you sell cattle, you kind of have one main option. These days you're gonna sell them at auction. You don't know what price you're gonna get.
Crossing your fingers, you're hoping for the best. You're trying to add a little bit of value in the same way that everybody else that sells cattle is also trying to add value. If everybody's adding the same value, you're not really adding value.
So I decided to go out on my own, trying to have a little more control over what I was selling, what price I was charging for it. I hated, I felt like we did a good job growing cattle, but I never saw a stake out of those cattle. Never knew what kind of job would truly deal with the end product.
So this kind of bought the whole thing in-house. So for most cattle farmers selling live product, I sell the same product in frozen pieces. So that's how I add the value.
I try to sell a premium product. When people eat my steak, if their reaction is not, this is the best steak I've ever had, I'm highly disappointed. Our goal is always to have a premium product and that is another way we add value.
My beef does not cost the same as what a grocery store beef costs. I always say, it's pretty rare people know when they come to me, they're not gonna get cheap beef. But I always say, nobody goes to my Ferrari and says, well, I'm surprised it's not the price of a Toyota.
You get what you pay for. As far as a little more value added, I've just kind of gotten into the beef tallow, beef broth, and looking into tallow-based skin care type stuff. All these ways to use as much of the animal as I can, keep everything in-house, keep control over the whole supply chain, and even add more value to that animal once it's back in my hands.
Good deal, man. Whole lot of running control and kind of managing the barriers that you had direct control of. Cool.
Brent, maybe take that same question and think from a poultry production standpoint. What do you see that's happening and working well today in that space? I think the dynamic in poultry, because it's fully integrated, it's a little different than other pieces of ag.
What it does, it really puts a lot of pressure on it. Going back to what my friend was saying, you've gotta distinguish yourself some way, and chicken's chicken. It's not that different than what you're really making.
The process you take, the way you carry your birds, the people who are growing for you, the way you take care of those growers, and ultimately, the relationship you have with customers. I mean, Brompton's always a, what I would call, kind of non-branded. We were perfectly satisfied with supply being a supplier.
Just a great partner, and typically our customers stayed with us for years. I'm talking about 18 years, they didn't want to change. They knew us, they counted on us, they knew what we could do.
Through the course of that, when I look back where we started, it was just chicken and a box. As you build those relationships, you start to have customers who say, well, what about this, or can you do this, or can you try that? So it really did kind of push us at times to try different things in the plant beyond just a 40 pound box.
For example, when you get into portioning systems that we put in place, we're a high pressure water like jet. It takes the picture of the breast meat going in, and you tell it, I want to cut this size fillet, and for the rest of what's left, I want you to make nuggets of this size. It takes a picture, it kind of starts to know the length, and know what it's looking for, and really make the best cut possible.
That is not something we would have jumped into if it hadn't been for those relationships were there, and they were asking for that type of value added inside the plant. So it's funny how that customer really can drive you to try different things, and to go on something that we didn't really want to do. I mean, the equipment was expensive, and those maintenance guys we had were wonderful people, and they had a hammer, duct tape, and zip ties.
It's a piece of equipment, but when you put it in the inside, it's literally computer driven with cameras and vision systems. You saw maintenance guys walking up with a mouse and a keyboard. It was just a whole different dynamic that we had to adjust to.
So that's the kind of things you do in the poultry industry, I think. But beyond actually creating a further processing type operation, that's the kind of value added when you're trying to do it in poultry. And it's kind of market-backed, market-custom-backed.
Thomas, same question. Yes, so with cold farmers, I mean, our value add that we think we bring to the product is pre-seasoned. So seasoned southern vegetables, and that differentiates us from the other products that are out there in the marketplace.
And when you think about it, you go into the grocery store a little bit, what Ben was saying is we think it's a premium product. And canned vegetables, unfortunately, are seen as a value product today, rather than a cost-conscious high-nutritional option. And we are a premium option in a value category, and that's difficult at times.
Particularly when you go into Wal-Mart or you go into something that is a huge drive for private label store brands that are out there today. Really puts a squeeze on the branded products. I mean, somebody like a Del Monte.
I mean, they are in so much financial trouble right now, it's not even funny. That's a brand that is gonna exist in some other form or fashion years down the road. And we've been doing a lot of things like Amy has.
I mean, putting in the technology to help us automate. And you said duct tape, zip ties, and a hammer. I mean, with us, it's a seven-inch, 16-inch wrench, a pair of channel locks, and a flathead screwdriver.
So it's the same kind of thing in trying to convert our manufacturing operation to be able to do that. The amount of money that we've invested in McCall Farms over the past six years in visual sorting technology to be able to get, whether it's a discolored whole load of peanuts, stems out of green beans, or black spots out of sweet potatoes, have helped us allow us to be able to handle some of the problems that we've run into over the years. But being a premium product in a value category and trying to partner with growers across the state and across the region to be able to give them other options other than traditional row crops is something that we take very seriously and something that we want to continue to develop.
And the big picture is get more products to be able to get grown in South Carolina so that we can give more acres and more pounds to people and then reduce breakoff. Fantastic. I mean, definitely some themes there.
So talk about what you got in the mic. We kind of flipped that coin over. So your point there, the desire to have more production here.
And what are the limitations, right? I mean, what would you kind of raise up as key impediments to that? And there's definitely acreage pressure to be able to get the amount of acres that you need to grow a certain amount of commodities on.
But I would say that the biggest pressure that I see out there today is the viability of the crops to be able to get grown in our environment. I mean, when you sit there and look at vegetable crops, particularly like green beans, for example. I mean, the varieties of green beans that are out there, were developed really for upper Midwest production.
If anybody here from Lake City, I'm sure several people have heard me tell this story before, but there used to be a sign back in the day driving into Lake City, South Carolina, it said, Green Bean Capital of the World. What I'll tell you is that we run green beans from about mid-March all the way through mid-August, all up and down the East Coast. And the lowest yield per acre that we get year in and year out is from the green beans that are grown in the state of South Carolina.
And it's not because farmers are worse, it's because we don't have varieties that are adapted to the temperature and the environments that we have here today. So to me, that's the biggest opportunity. We've got to have a focus on it.
It's got to be from us, it's got to be from the South Carolina Department of Ag, Clemson University, our growers, seed companies, and figure out how do we get multiple different parties at the same table with the same end goal in mind. And I think there's a huge opportunity for that. We can get more yield per acre, we can get crops grown here better.
Our window for green beans harvesting in South Carolina is probably about three to four weeks right now. If we can grow that out to six or eight weeks and then turn around and get a fall crop on it as well, that would be a huge benefit to everybody involved. And Tom, not to put words in your mouth, but I mean, that sounds like we'll have a bit of a higher tech discussion maybe later on, but I mean, sounds like fairly traditional breeding work that you're talking about, right?
Not necessarily. I mean, I think that there are, rather than just putting stuff out in the field and see what happens and then doing some other growing, I think there's an ample opportunity for controlled environments to be able to speed stuff up. I think there's ample opportunity from using AI and some predictive analytics to be able to come up with what the right genetic sequence is for that particular crop.
And then, how do we rapidly screen all the available stuff that's out there? I mean, there are a bunch of different crops that come from the Middle East and different areas that are going to have a whole lot more drought sensitivity than we may have here. There are other areas of the world that are going to have more wet feet tolerant products or maybe somewhere that's got more bacterial leaf blight resistance.
And so, there's a lot of things that we can do, but we've got to actively be able to rapidly screen a wide variety of different crops and then very rapidly determine, okay, this is what we got. This is what we need to get to. How do we rapidly get there through some predictive modeling that says you need to cross this with this and then go down that whole thing four or five times to be able to get what we consider an ideal crop.
And it can be done. I know you've got a question a little bit about other techniques that are out there, you know, GMO and all that stuff, and we'll get to that when it gets there. But, you know, I think it can be done much quicker than the traditional model that's out there.
We just have got to use technology, figure out where it's feasible. And to Landon's question earlier, you know, we've got to make sure we model the technology to what we need as a consumer. Great.
Thank you. Good stuff. And Fred, maybe from your perspective, same thing.
You know, kind of looking through the lens of poultry, and things are working well, but what do you see as sort of limitations today on driving more value at it? I think one of the big things, and you've heard it all day long, labor. That's an important factor in what you do.
There's a lot of pressure on that labor market that you're trying to attract. I look at it, and again, my time at any farms, you know, you were higher than that $3,500 for a period of time because you could get more than $3,500. And because you began to see the constriction, not just a COVID constriction, but just in general, not being able to find people, you were having to get more creative about what you were doing.
It's a restriction that actually pushes you into more technology. That's kind of how we got into a lot of other equipment that was actually on the line, was because we didn't have the people. Now, it didn't necessarily replace everybody, because you still had to have people before it, to feed it well, properly, and you had to have people afterwards, because the device itself typically is not as good as you when it comes to things like balance, or quality, or handling pieces of meat that just don't fit that particular model that it's trying to reach out and look, sorry, this is what I'm going after.
I think labor is a big issue. I think about South Carolina. I know that there's been some times that there's been some people interested in putting another process in place.
It's never one thing. It's always several things you kind of add up and say, all right, this is just not the right time. There's some good places.
There's some good opportunities. There's some won't. I know part of my role is in the M&A side, the purchasing side.
Any time I want to go talk to somebody, whether it was the town that we were looking at, or whatever it was, it's always nice to be wanted. You always want to be somebody that, hey, we want you here, and you have that in South Carolina. When you look at the cost of entry of doing green food, it's a huge number, and then you're always worried about, am I going to have enough labor?
So that's probably the biggest thing I see that kind of constrains you on doing more. It's not impossible. I think you're seeing some shifts in certain parts of the state that some of your hourly employees are being pushed away from.
You go to Charleston. When I was young, some of them was a town you drove through to get to Charleston, and now it's part of Charleston, and a lot of those hourly employees that were kind of around there working in Charleston are now being kind of pushed outward and outward and outward. You're really seeing Orangeburg, that Orangeburg area, really kind of grow, and having, in my opinion, looking at it from a labor standpoint, a potential opportunity for a lot more labor available to a plant like a manufacturing operation.
Can I add something? And to add to that, I mean, I think that there's got to be a little bit of a shift in how we allocate dollars for future investment and that type of stuff into the state. And, you know, so many times we go and we're looking at different things, and it's all about, okay, what's the head count?
What's the head count? What's the head count? And unfortunately, there are a lot of investment in capital expenses that, honestly, it is because of labor.
And then, you know, if people are spending the money and putting the investment into their companies, you know, that's keeping companies here. You know, we've got to make sure that commerce and everybody else, there's got to be some opportunity for automation investment and to be able to grow what we're doing, not just maintain what we have. Great point.
That's a great point. Metrics need to line up with what the goals are. Yeah, yeah.
Ben, maybe take that same question. Yeah, kind of limitations on you being able to capture some value. Yeah, mine, interesting seeing the difference between our industries.
So as a small producer, I'm depending on other places to process my product. These guys have their own processing facilities. If they want to change something, they go do it.
I have to depend on somebody else to do it. So big problem first, big spotlight. Everybody saw it.
COVID hit. Empty grocery store shelves. We all suddenly realized we need more local processing capacity.
I know at the time, I think there were three USDA facilities in the state. People that sell IV through the mail, direct their customers, stuff like that, not going to be custom exempt route. Has to be USDA inspected.
That is an expensive process for anybody running a plant like that. There are only three. I think there might be four or five now.
We kind of addressed that some. It is not nearly as hard now to get a butcher date. For a while there, you were two years out.
You cannot run a business. If you get butcher dates two years out, is it possible? That's eased up now.
Now we have a little bit of a different problem. If I want to add value to something, nowhere around here does it. So talent, I want to take my patent and get it turned into talent.
I cannot do it because I'm not USDA inspected. I don't have a facility. I don't have $3 million to build a facility.
I take my stuff to Georgia. Nowhere around here to do it. Use my bones, same problem.
I'm going to Georgia. My processing, I go to North Carolina. I'll touch on that more in a minute.
I don't have too many people around here that do processing. Even if they do processing, they have to do it in a way where my customer is going to see that product. It's at least as good or better as what's in the grocery store.
That kind of leads me to packaging. You want a good premium packaging when you're shipping to a customer. So that's a nice pretty label.
Marketing, big part of a premium product. You want that nice pretty label. It's a black and white label.
Looks like it was printed on a printer from the 90s. Not a good look. I know there's a process around here.
I know the owner used it. They put the ground beef in chubs. I don't know what those are.
It's just a little cylindrical thin package. You see that little metal crimps on the end to keep it sealed. You set that in your sink to thaw for your supper that night.
You come back to it. It's not blood, but it looks like blood in your sink. It's not a good look.
Customers don't like to see that. They don't want to pick up a bloody package. I need somebody that's going to vacuum seal.
I need it to look nice and pretty. I don't know anybody in South Carolina that does that. It's a big problem for me to get a value added product and then to make that product look pretty.
It may sound a little vain, but that is what a customer that's paying a premium price for your product. That's what they want to see. Labeling requirements are tough.
I won't touch on that too much unless somebody asks a question. Grass-fed, I cannot put that on my package because I'm not certified. Cows are 100% grass-fed.
Anybody can come out at any time and try to find grain on the farm without zero luck. Unless I go through an expensive and third-party process to get that done, I can't put it on my label. I can put it on my website.
I can put it on a sign next to the beef, but it cannot go on the label itself. I wish I could do that, and I can. It's just expensive and it's already a tight margin business.
You've got to draw the line somewhere. Alternative markets. One thing we see, I have to grow just about all of my own beef because basically every farmer in the state, and rightfully so, that's how I thought up until a couple years ago, if you're going to sell a cow, you're going through an auction lot or a video auction.
Those are basically your options. Not many people know that there's people out there that will pay a premium dollar for meat. If you will grow your cows in a certain way, that satisfies my requirements, I will pay more than the auction house.
Depending on what they are, I sell grain-fed beef too. If you can show me where you don't have any hormones, show me mRNA vaccines, which is not a thing for cows, but customers ask for that all the time. Take all these certain boxes.
That is a market that cattle farmers can take advantage of, not just me, but other people around the state. They can take advantage of at a premium price and they don't have to go through just our one traditional outlet. Make a little more money, great for smaller farmers that aren't selling by the load lot, by the truck load.
I've sold a lot of loads of calves in my day. It's a lot more fun to do it this way. But we don't know that those opportunities are out there for farmers.
Other farmers besides me cannot take advantage of them. I'll tell you, running a website, you don't have people to do all this stuff, I kind of have to run my own website. I don't know anything about websites.
Marketing, I don't know much about marketing. All these kinds of things. Other farmers might not sell direct to consumer because they don't want to do those things.
I don't blame them. It is no fun doing those things to me. I like to be a farmer.
If they have companies like me and other people around the state that sell beef, those farmers can grow the beef, sell it to the guy, sell it to their website, and that farmer doesn't have to worry about all of that extra fluff. They can just worry about farming. So there are opportunities out there.
We just need to communicate that they are there. Great point. So I tell you, looking at the clock, I might, let me just steal what Ronnie Summers played here and maybe get a few questions from the audience.
We won't just hold it until the last. So anybody got one burning in right now? Yes, sir.
One of the things that I'm wondering is, you know, new farmers getting into business, how do you become profitable? It's on. Okay.
How do you become profitable? How do you get into business, right? So it sounds like from y'all's perspective, you're talking about the value-add business, helping to keep that bottom line alive.
Is there a support from the state for you guys to invest in value-add, and could that be leveraged by new farmers coming out of college who want to get involved in something, who want to get in the tribal label industry? Is it grant money? Is there support from the state or from universities?
Can you speak a little more to that? I guess that might be a good question for Commissioner Weathers here a little bit. For us, there are definitely some benefits out there for the amount of product that we get in the state of South Carolina and how much grows year over year.
But as far as anything specifically about younger farmers, no, there's not. The biggest thing is we've got to find people that are going to be in for the long haul because for us, it's an investment for the farmer to be able to grow with us. There are a lot of different equipment needs that are different than what your traditional things are when you're harvesting collard greens and turnips and kale.
It's just different than your standard combine. So it's a lot of different things. It's something that we need to continue to do and work on, but make sure we've got the right soil type and the right farmer that's young and has got a family to support and wants to grow it.
Those are the type of people that we're looking at trying to partner with over the years. They know of a couple. I got one a while back.
I got a producer grant. That's not state. That's not state.
I got one a while back. I got a producer grant. That's not state.
That's federal. It's through USDA. I think the way the grant works these days, you can get up to a quarter million dollars for anything that's not related to the farm.
So basically, it can help pay for anything after, in my case, you drop that cow off at the butcher shop. You get it back, you use it for marketing, labeling, website pages, labor, buying freezers, whatever. It applies to any business, not just beef.
That's a pretty big one. I think it's up to a quarter million dollars you can get on that. Department of Ag has the ACRE program, the commissioners to speak to, and a little bit of the health system training.
The same BAPG grants has a component for business planning. I think it's up to $50,000 if you're trying to get off the ground. But one word of advice I would give to anybody, whatever field you're trying to get in, find a farmer that's doing it.
I promise they're all looking for help. Learn the trade from them. I got a guy with me now.
He's great. I'm liable to lose him one day because he's so good, he just started his own business. He's learning from me.
I think he'll eventually go on, but it kind of gives the opportunity to. He's got a farm on the side, I don't care. So he's kind of growing his very small farm on the side while he's still bringing in income and learning the trade.
So that's a great opportunity for anybody. Those are the ones I know of. The ACRE program is a great one.
And then Jim Johnson, Jim, raise your hand. Jim's a great resource around lots of different funding opportunities. And a real particular focus on that.
So if you don't know Jim, that'd be a great connection to make as well. Good question. Other questions?
We got a few more we'll work through. Alright. So I don't know who, it might have been you mentioned MRNA.
And so kind of this notion around some alternative markets. You know, things like sustainability, non-GMO, hormone-free I think might have been your specific example. So what do you see?
Are those threats or are those opportunities? And if there are opportunities, how do we kind of capitalize on some of those things? Maybe start with you.
From a poultry standpoint, there were, if I look at Antibiotic Free, when that started, it was one company that kind of stepped into it pretty well, and that was Purdue. It was kind of niche. Everybody said it's a niche, it's a niche, it's a niche.
And we always looked at what we did and said, we'll never have to do that, and we don't want to do that. And then they added cost, they added complexity. If you've got five feeds for a bird, you have to have 10 feed, because one is a feed package for Antibiotic Free and one is for conventional.
You still have conventional birds. Your plant actually becomes two plants, that you have a conventional shift and you have an antibiotic free shift. So it was always something we knew, we're never going to do this, we're never going to do this, and then a customer that we had a really great relationship with, one of their competitors had moved to Antibiotic Free product, and they came to us and said, look, we don't want to do this either, but we've got to do this.
And they actually stepped in with us to kind of cover some of the initial costs to kind of get things started. I remember going through that process thinking, this is nuts, this is not going to work, this is going to be a mess. The reality was, you figure it out.
Sometimes the way is the obstacle, and that's what that was for us. We just had to get in our head that this customer was a very strong customer. It wasn't a long time, they were going to stick around, this wasn't just like a year kind of thing.
We recognized to keep them happy and to do the right thing, we had to kind of step into this. It was hard at first because you're not immediately selling everything that you made antibiotic free as antibiotic free. But over the next 12 months, you begin to see that percentage get more and more and more and more.
That fear that you have when you see something like that, you go to Europe, and I was in Europe probably every two or three years. Because that's where a lot of your equipment from the plant came from, was that European, Amsterdam, Belgium, Germany, all through there. You would see their farms and you would just scratch your head.
They've got concrete floors, they've got perches, they've got windows, they've got doors to go outside. You would walk in and go, this is nuts, we'll never do this. Now you're starting to see in the U.
S. some of this kind of stuff creep in. Some of it is, and this is something Mr.
Amick always kind of said, that is the customer is king. Ultimately that end consumer really is driving us. Sometimes they're affected by marketing and by Instagram reels and by Facebook and all the things going out there in the news media.
In the end they really drive a lot of what you do, especially when you get into poultry that is going everywhere across the United States. Key insight. Dr.
G, you want to jump on that same question? Yeah, the non-GMOs, specifically CRISPR technologies for breeding. The concern that we have with CRISPR is, right now, if you go and get a particular genetic sequence out of a green bean and clip it out and go and insect it, and then insert it into another one, it's not considered GMO today.
But what would happen if all of a sudden our seed supply all was a particular variety that did have CRISPR technology used in the development of it, and then whoever, some regulatory body decided that CRISPR was now considered GMO and non-GMO is on all of our labels. So that's the thing that we continue to monitor and watch. And hopefully the traditional breeding technologies can be accelerated to match some of the speeds that you're seeing with the benefits of using CRISPR.
It's not a huge thing for us. Another point that I'd make is, we've done some different value-added things around sodium levels, for example. Simply seasoned in a reduced sodium line.
And what we've found is, really, our products around season, you're not coming to get our seasoned products because of the low sodium level that's in them. You're coming to get them because of the full flavor, and it's more of a special occasion, whether it's Sunday afternoon after church or whatever. The whole labeling and the marketing side of things, you've really got to understand your customer and what you're selling, because next thing you know, you could be offering something and putting a lot of money in it, and you really don't have a customer base for it.
Do you want to add anything to that? To answer directly to your question, I think opportunity for everything, and I think some of these things are silly. I would never grow an organic cow.
That's not what I'm going to do. But if there's a market for it, there needs to be somebody to fill it. There's an opportunity for somebody.
If there's a market, I'll fill it. Good. That customer-backed theme seems to be consistent.
I guess maybe one other thing, we talked about Apergrant. Apergrant came up, and I know several folks have benefited there. Controlled environment space, great discussion before about that.
One thing that I had rolling around in my head as we got into this early discussion around value-add is, just four and a half, five million acres of land in South Carolina, right? How do we begin to affect change at scale? How do we give growers across the state some different opportunities?
And I guess one of the things I'm afraid you're not talking about, well, all of us as a matter of fact, is like, yeah, Cato was right. So this notion around confined animal production. Yeah.
If you look at some of the numbers we talked about in North Carolina, if you remember in that $2,100 an acre, I think if you peel that onion back, a heavy dose of the rarity between here and there has got a lot to do around animal production. So just any thoughts around that as an opportunity and what it would take to do that appropriately in the state? Yeah.
The reality is most of our growers, and this is true across the state, most of your growers are doing it in combination with a farming operation. They've got the land, they've got the time, they're there, and they're looking for something that is much more consistent. That's one thing Poca brings is it's pretty consistent.
I mean, if you're going to do about four half flocks a year, grow a larger bird, we do about a 975, 10-pound bird, so it's a big bird. The entry point, I see my friend Mr. Skelly here, the entry point is a higher number, but it is a good business that people really can bring alongside their current farming operation.
The demand for people who want to grow, there's a lot of people that would go to chicken houses. I mean, there's just that many people that would want to do it on their property. You've got some constraints in that you're always trying to keep your growers full.
They're making a good living through the years, so you're not taking on the extra typically. If you look at some of the challenges of building a greenfield operation, to start up a live operation, so that's what the PPA handled through the years, they handled just about everything, but even the processing side, to crank up a live operation is a pretty big notion. It's a lot of people stepping into something that's got a lot of risk to it.
And then I think the other piece that I think affects that piece of what's going on is, we heard it earlier in one of the panel discussions, the litigation side can be pretty aggressive. That's rare, but when it does happen, their goal typically, the people who are against, they go through the permitting process, they get approved, they get out. There are mechanisms and processes they can use to kind of have their case heard.
And what you see is, with a lot of those folks, the method to their madness is just to slow everything down. Just to make it so painful and so long that you just basically say, I want to move on with my life. I've got one right now I'm working on that I think it's been about four years in process.
In and out of court. And this last little bit really has been, in my humble opinion, almost an abusive process. They've got money.
There have been, in this particular area, these houses are being kind of contested. There have been other problems that have gone up within six months, nine months. Nobody had an issue with this.
These one select group of neighbors who have money to be able to do this, are able to fund it at a discounted rate compared to what we would do. So, for example, Amie Farms, their legal fee compared to a 501c3 type of situation. It's a different number, it's a different math.
And that's something that I think is risky when you think about what you do in that one particular form. That didn't weigh anything. The last part of the Administrative Law Court case, we actually won, and their motion to review was dismissed.
Which we technically could go and say, okay, we've got a permit, we can build houses. But when they go to the appeals court, you don't know what's going to happen there. So it freezes people.
And that's something that I think is very difficult. That can be used for other parts of agriculture. So I think it's people see, okay, this is what they did to stop that, so maybe we can use that same method to stop whatever operation they want to stop.
And there are some people that will fund that, and some organizations that will do it at a discounted rate that can make it very painful. So just play that back. I mean, there's opportunity there, but it's going to take some different strategies, legal strategies for us to battle some of this.
And you see your integrators really get very particular about sites. So you've got something that may go through the DES process perfectly, but you're actually going out, you're sending people out there to look around at neighbors. You're looking at maps before you even get to the kind of ground services, because as a company, you don't have time for that either.
You don't want a problem. You want to coexist with your neighbors. So it's a challenge on the standards for what you would build and where you would build and who you have going for you to be raised, simply because you can't take the risk of something that's too close to something that you know is going to have an issue.
And even DES, they do a – DES offers a free permit kind of sit-down, but they'll sit down with you and kind of look at the area, and then they can kind of, you know, look at the neighborhood and know have we had complaints from other people about this, that, and the other, to kind of help you with that. But you've got to take that into account, because if not, it's just going to be a situation where you're spending a lot of time and effort, and nothing's happening. Great input.
Hey, late in the clock, let me just pause. Questions. Questions from the audience.
Thanks. Sir? Thank you very much.
It's been a great panel. So looking forward from now where we have the Make America Healthy Again initiative, regenerative agriculture, all of this type of thing coming on the scene in D. C.
is being important. Do you think there's an opportunity to have – to essentially market South Carolina agricultural products that are already healthier? Like at McCall Farms, for example, you're packaging high nutrition, you know, culturally preserved in a can, basically.
So is there an opportunity to essentially you already have that value addition now because the markets and demand may open up more for healthier food, including animal source foods, which are a really important part of a diverse and healthy diet. Do you see any opportunities to, without doing further value addition, to just kind of message what you're doing around that? I would really hope so.
I mean, you look at contents on a lot of our labels. It's the produce that's in there, water, and a little bit of salt. And that's it.
But what I'll also tell you is, unfortunately, the customer's memory is extremely short-lived. And when we went through COVID and the ability for us, I mean, canned food has got about 3% food waste in the entire supply chain continuum, whereas fresh or raw produce is substantially higher. I mean, up in the 40 to 45% range.
And the package, there's no better package out there from a shelf-stable, tamper-proof package than you can get. Unfortunately, for canned products, it just isn't sexy. It's just not sexy, and it's just got a perceived value that it is a value-based food, not something that's nutritious and delicious.
I think that's where our opportunity is, much as anything is. And I think if you go over to Europe, over in Europe, canned food, a lot of times, is really seen as a premium product over other things. So that's something that we work with, the Consumer Brands Group, with several different industry trade groups in the can, but it doesn't seem to be taking on.
As far as RFK, a lot of stuff that they're doing with Make America Healthy, again, all the dyes and all those things that they're going after out of the get-go, that's not anything that is anywhere in our radar or even in our plant. We don't utilize any of those. We feel very comfortable with that.
We did a little bit of a risk assessment. Once these started coming out, we got our ears open on it, but right now, there's not a single product that we put in our cans that we're worried about being on these chopping blocks. Yeah, I know Tallo's been a big thing with the Make America Healthy, again, movement.
That coincidental timing on my part, I've been working on that since, like, September last year. But, you know, we already push the healthy side of things. We've had tests done on our meat and meat labs to show superior fatty acid profiles.
It's not really going to change much of what we do. If people want to buy the Tallo, happy to sell it to you. I'm not a nutritionist, I have no idea if it's any more healthy for you, but I'm happy to grow it.
Yeah, great question. I mean, marketing was a theme through the end, I think. Yeah, other questions?
This kind of feeds off the last question, but I guess it's specific to the animal and I focus with Fred and Ben. How do you see a marketing opportunity for the increased interest in lab-grown meats? Thomas was talking about ingredients in their canned goods a minute ago.
Very, very simple. I don't know if you ever looked at the ingredient list for lab-grown meats, what goes into it, but the ingredients in my packages are beef, period. You know, that's kind of an easy thing to push.
I think lab-grown meats will probably get some traction at some point. If for no other reason, the fat in an animal does not have to die to make that product. But I think it's going to be a kind of hard sell to say that this thing's grown in a lab.
If you're kind of seeing a little bit of the process of what it takes to do that, it's kind of gross. But it'll get some traction eventually. At one time, GMOs came out.
We're going to eat a GMO now. About every piece of corn in America is GMO. So it'll be a marketing thing.
I do think it'll be a challenge down the road, but I think it's a ways out. You see in the state, there was some legislation about the labeling of that, which is key because it's so easy to get confused. If you're looking at a fake book and it's a slam, it can sometimes persuade you of different things, but when it's on the label, that's the thing that helps it, the end consumer.
If you look at the Impossible Burger, it was going to be the next greatest thing in the world. And it's got a niche. It's got a place.
It's got a foothold, but it's really not taken over. Some of that is cost. Some of that is ultimately, I think, people begin to think about where does my food come from.
You see, I think, an instinct of I want something clean. I mean, poultry plants, it's a pretty clean label. That's what we've always kind of sold.
It's pretty simple. So I think some of that is, I'm not saying it's going to come and go. I think there will be some people that do it.
There may be people with more discretionary income than most folks that want to lean into that or people who just do not come into it. They're willing to put more money into it. But I think your individual consumers tend to want to focus on the value, the quality, the safety of it, and a cleaner label is just all three of those things.
Good. Maybe one last, maybe one last question. I see the commissioner joined us.
I definitely don't want to cut his time short. One last one? Alright.
Guys, I guess we're going to draw this to a close. Let me just say again, panel, thank you guys. Great, great insights.
And again, I appreciate you making the time. I would reinforce where I started. I hope this is the start of a lot more discussions and some actual planning on what we do going forward to affect value add, not just think back to what a great meeting this was.
I hope it spurs some ideas that turn into results as we get together next time we do this. So with that, thank you guys. Thanks for being a part of the Cultivate Ag conversation.
What's one value added idea that you could start exploring this season? Until then, be bold, be fruitful, and keep growing what's next.