When Tobacco Was King Here

Source from:  By Peggy Mishoe - For The Sun News 08/10/2007

Heritage Day event tells crop's history The Horry County Museum in Conway presented the history of tobacco in pictures, videos, exhibits and live demonstrations during Tobacco Heritage Day Saturday. Tobacco was once king in Horry and Georgetown counties and grew on every farm. Today, it grows only in a few scattered fields. Farmers no longer follow auctioneers down rows of cured tobacco piled on warehouse floors. The warehouses are gone or serving as something else, and the few farmers who grow tobacco must contract with tobacco companies to sell it. "I think this is a great way for all of our people who are not from Horry County to get acquainted with what we did in tobacco and how it was valuable to the economy," said Jeanne Edwards of Bayboro. "It kept our banks and our general stores open, and it fed our families." "We're probably watching a bygone era because I think tobacco is going," said Jerry Housand of Conway as he walked among the antique tractors and engines displayed by the Waccamaw Tractor and Engine Club. Rhonda Etherden, president of the Friends of the Museum, which sponsored the event, stood at a "stringing horse" and demonstrated how green tobacco leaves were bundled and strung on sticks before being hung in the barns to cure. Other volunteers showed how cured tobacco was tied before it went to market. The old barns are vanishing. Lon Calhoun and other local artists paint them, and some of those paintings hang on the walls of people who spent many hot summer days working at tobacco barns. One of Calhoun's paintings was raffled off at the event to raise funds for the museum, which will move to its new location at the old Burroughs School. Walter Hill, curator of history, said they are hoping to make that move in 2009. Since colonization, farmers have sustained themselves by raising livestock and producing cotton, turpentine, timber, corn, tobacco, wheat and other crops. Hill said some indigo and rice were also grown locally. With tobacco fading away, farmers are changing the way they do business and the crops they grow. "You're going to see farms become factories. The way we grow crops is going to change based on the use," said Greg Hyman of Conway, president of the Carolina AgriSolutions Growers Association, or CASGA, who spoke at the event. "Technically, farmers could become the next oil companies for the United States," he said. Hyman said crops will be grown with genetic application, meaning the farmer knows who and what he is growing them for. "It's not a lot of new crops, but it's a lot of new uses for crops," Hyman said. "Any botanical can have enhanced uses." Hyman is growing muscadine grapes, which are indigenous to the area. Grapes make jam, jelly and wine, and are used in other products, including aromatherapy, candles, skin care and dietary supplements. Grain and wood fibers are used to make many things, including car dashes. Hyman said he understands that by 2012 in England, all cars will have to be 90 percent biodegradable. "All of that will have to come from the farm," he said. "Everything comes from Mother Earth." The food, fiber and forestry industry is a $35 billion industry in South Carolina, second only to tourism, and provides about 460,000 jobs, according to a report by Mark S. Henry, a professor in the Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics at Clemson University. Hyman said many smart people in farmers' organizations and in institutions such as Clemson are studying crops and other ways local farmers can compete in a changing world market. Bringing tourists to farms, having factories to make products and stores to sell those products in are among the things farmers are focusing on. Before too many years pass, there will be no one who worked in tobacco in the old days to demonstrate how it was done. In the future, the Horry County Museum plans to have a living farm where people can learn the history of farming in Horry County from 1900 to 1955. Enditem