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Agritourism seeds growth for South Carolina farmers
By Rachel Pleasant
Staff Writer
With the flip of one calendar page—September to October—everything changes at Legare Farms.
The quiet mornings and peaceful evenings at this sprawling 380-acre sod farm and plant nursery on Johns Island are suddenly interrupted.
Streams of cars and buses wind their way down Legare’s dirt roads, carrying legions of tourists eager to pick pumpkins, stuff scarecrows and get lost in a maze of corn.
It is October: the peak of agritourism season.
“In October, we’re open seven days a week,” said Helen Legare-Floyd, who owns and operates the farm with her sister and brother. “We start at 8 in the morning and if we’re out by 1 a.m., we’re lucky.”
Hard times
In 2003, Legare Farms had managed to survive four years of drought and the economic slowdown that followed the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks—but only barely.
Legare-Floyd, her sister, Linda Berry, and brother, Thomas Legare, the ninth generation to run the farm, faced mounting bills and an uncertain future
“We started selling sod in the early ’80s,” Legare-Floyd said. “Back then, we were getting $95 for a pallet of centipede sod. Now we’re getting $100. Twenty years later we’re only getting $5 more a pallet, but diesel is three times as much since the ’80s. Fertilizer costs more. Chemicals cost more. What we have to pay a truck driver costs more.”
Something had to change if this farm, established in 1725 by Solomon Legare, was to stay afloat.
After attending a conference where they learned about agritourism, the three siblings found their answer.
The key was to diversify.
Pumpkin patches and profits
The phrase agritourism encompasses many things, whether it is a roadside food stand, a nature trail, a pumpkin patch or a hayride. It is all about getting people to come to a farm, have a little fun and spend some money while they’re doing it.
“The two biggest industries in South Carolina are agriculture and tourism,” said Becky Walton, spokeswoman for the state’s department of agriculture. “This is a good mixture of those two industries. It adds values to farm operations. Different places are doing different things. Some do fishing and bird watching. Some do harvest festivals.”
Agritourism isn’t an altogether new concept. For instance, some farmers have been letting people come onto their property and pick fruits and vegetables for years. But, Walton said, agritourism is becoming an increasingly popular option for those who make their livings from the land.
The department of agriculture set out about two months ago to create a database of agritourism operations. Since then, nearly 45 farmers across the state have responded, though Walton suspects there are far more out there who simply haven’t returned the paperwork.
The South Carolina National Heritage Corridor Farmers Association publishes a booklet highlighting agritourism destinations stretching from the Upstate to the Lowcountry, including King’s Mart on Edisto Island, Bee City in Cottageville, Middleton Place in Charleston, Boone Hall Plantation in Mount Pleasant, Irvin-House Vineyards and Charleston Tea Plantation, both on Wadmalaw Island.
A competitive edge
Since 2003, when Legare Farms was opened up for school field trips and birthday parties, the family has added a pumpkin patch, summer camp and a sweet corn festival.
The decision to diversify began as a means to supplement income from sod and plant sales. Today nearly 20,000 people visit the Legare farm every year, and tourism now accounts for 50% of its business. The Legares haven’t hired any extra employees to help with the tourist activities, helping keep their expenses in check.
Without the tourism element, the farm “would be bankrupt,” Legare-Floyd said. Data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s 2002 census shows Legare Farms isn’t alone in its struggles. The market value of agricultural products sold in South Carolina in 2002 was $1.49 billion, down from $1.68 billion in 1997, the report said.
Agritourism gives American farmers a much-needed edge, said Walker Miller, whose family owns The Happy Berry in Pelzer, where visitors have been allowed to pick blueberries, blackberries, raspberries, figs and elderberries since 1979.
“If you look at our federal and international policies and all these free trade agreements, the South Carolina farmer has lost his competitive advantage,” Miller said. “Other countries have low costs of labor and can ship food for hundreds of thousands of miles. There is a dire situation.”
While agritourism keeps the Legare Farms’ bottom line in the black, Berry said she also sees cultural value in what her farm is doing.
“Today less than 25 percent of Americans have relatives who own a farm,” Berry said. “It used to be that you’d go and spend a week with grandma on the farm.”
Children today grow up with little knowledge of where the food they eat comes from, she said.
The competition
With agritourism gaining strength in South Carolina, the Legare family faces the new challenge of competing with other pumpkin patches and other hayrides for the tourist trade. To do this, they have to keep their tourism business new and fresh.
“We’re working on bird watching. We’ve got an incredible amount of wildlife out here,” Berry said, adding the farm is also thinking of adding cow patty bingo, a game where a tic-tac-toe sort of design is created in the grass. People choose squares, and then a cow is let loose. The square where the cow chooses to relieve itself is the winner.
Berry and Legare-Floyd are still working out all the details of how they will pull off cow patty bingo, but they both agree on one thing: their farm is forever changed.
“What I see in the future is expanding the agritourism and slowly cutting back on the sod but keeping the nursery as it is,” Berry said. “We get a lot of tourism leads from the nursery. We do a lot of e-mail and direct advertising through that.”
Rachel Pleasant is a staff writer for the Business Journal. E-mail her at rpleasant@charlestonbusiness.com.
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