Tomatoes
have been grown in South Carolina since the late 18th century
according to “The Early History of the Tomato in South Carolina” an article
published by the South Carolina Historical Society. The Sanders family has
thought for years that Gustav (Gus) Sanders planted the first commercial tomato
crop in 1909. This information came from
an article in the News and Courier, entitled Low-Country Gossip, by Chlotilde
R. Martin and written during prohibition. However, Sharon Sanders found note of
tomatoes being shipped out of Beaufort, SC in the spring of 1906. Gus Sanders
was Ross Sanders grandfather. He was the tax collector for Beaufort County. According to Ross, he was quite a land
speculator. That is how he got all their property on the island. An interesting side note is that he owned
Dataw Island at one time. Doing some research for this paper, I learned that he
bought several parcels of land in 1905 for about $1600 that make up Dataw now
and sold them in 1907 for $10,000 excluding the cemetery which he gave to the
Sam’s family. That has nothing to do with tomato farming but is just a fun tidbit.
This talk is
limited to tomato production in Beaufort County since the 1920’s. Most of my
research was done by talking to and taking notes from Mac and Don Sanders. They
are 4th and 5th generation tomato farmers. I also learned
a lot from local publications which have written articles on the Sanders
family.
Farmers in
the early part of this century grew a little bit of everything. Tomatoes were only a small part of their operation.
Ross Sanders talked about several packing houses in the Lobeco area that packed
many different types of produce, tomatoes being one. There were two packing houses, one in Port
Royal and one in St. Helena that packed predominately tomatoes. The packing house on St. Helena, which was
close to the boat landing off Seaside Road was run by Gustav Sanders,
great-grandfather to Mac Sanders.
Tomatoes were packed in wooden lugs or boxes, loaded on boats, and rowed
to Port Royal. At Port Royal, the
tomatoes were loaded on railroad cars and shipped to the northeast markets. Ed Sanders
started farming with his father in the late 20s. Other tomato farmers on St.
Helena during this time had the names of Jones, Reager, and Hughes.
The
depression took its toll on many of the farmers during this time. In fact, during this time Mr. Hughes lost Cat
Island because he trusted the banks to hold his money for a little while before
he paid his creditors. Gus Sanders lost
a great deal of money during the bank failure but held on to his land. However, it took him two years after the
depression to raise enough money to plant another crop of tomatoes.
World War II
brought change to the tomato industry as well as to the world. Farmers started to get good money for produce
including tomatoes. Between World War II
and the 60’s, tomato production grew to cover most of the county including from
Hilton Head Island to Seabrook, in and around Beaufort and most of St. Helena.
This boom in production saw names like Bishop, Trask, McCloud, Bellamy,
Dempsey, Godley, Ulmer, Crosby, Taylor, and Neal. Ross Sanders came to work on the farm in the
late 1940’s. A man by the name of Max Lipman, who owned a brokerage house on
the New York market, brought his six children to Beaufort during this time to
purchase and later finance the production of tomatoes in Beaufort. They later became the SixL’s Company, which
is still here today. This time frame saw
the number of tomato packing houses grow to more than twelve.
In the early
60’s, conditions changed again. Farming
became more difficult to make a profit for several reasons. There were horrific rains in the years 1962
through 1965, which flooded several people out.
There were several years of frost during this period that set the
Sanders family back far enough to take ten years to work themselves out of
debt. High interest rates and tight
money forced several farmers out. Farmers
had to turn to migrant labor to harvest the tremendous volume of tomatoes grown
in the county.
The mid 70’s
saw the change from ground to the plastic mulch culture used today. This had several advantages, among them being
better weed and moisture control, and less production loss due to ground born
diseases. But, with these advantages came an increase in cost for production. The Sanders family was one of the last farms
to make this change. They were getting
similar money and similar yields with tomatoes being grown on the ground until
the late 70’s. Then one year, tomatoes
grown on plastic brought a fifty-cent premium over ground tomatoes and they
were forced to change. Mac and Gray
Sanders were working full time on the farm (4th generation and
Clemson graduates) and helped to make this transition. They spent a season repairing plastic that
was blowing away all over the farm before they learned how to put it down
effectively.
In 1981,
Shiparo, the last packing house to pack tomatoes for independent farmers closed
its doors. We have gone from over twelve
packing houses in the 60’s to two left, Sanders and SixL’s.
In 1984 the
switch was made to drip irrigation. This
time the Sanders farm was the first with this innovation. This system of irrigation and fertilization
allowed water and fertilizer to be applied directly to the plant’s root
system. With it came more controls than
they knew what to do with. Tomato yields
increased greatly but the system is not forgiving to mistakes and the cost of
production again increased.
In 1985,
SixL’s, who were financing outside growers at the time started their company
farm. In 1996, SixL’s last outside
grower left the company, leaving only the company farm. This leaves us today with only two major
tomato farms in the area, Seaside (Sanders) and SixL’s.
There are
now less than eight hundred NET acres on St. Helena and Lobeco this year
supplying two packing houses. Net acres mean the actual acreage taken up by
rows of plants, not the ground between the rows or the ground at the end of the
rows needed to turn the tractors and trucks around. It takes 600 acres to net
400 planting acres. Collectively they employ approximately thirty people year-round,
approximately one hundred people during the tomato growing season, and greater
than five hundred people during harvest.
At the end of harvest, at least one hundred people are employed to clean
up the fields, that is to remove plastic and tomato string and stakes. All the
extra help is housed at the farm’s expense.
Both packing
houses together will ship over one and one half million twenty-five-pound boxes
in approximately twenty-two working days and can ship over one hundred thousand
boxes a day during peak days. Estimate
national consumption of tomatoes is approximately one million a day. So, little Beaufort county is supplying its
share.
This is how
it happens on Seaside Farm. In September and October, the Sanders start getting
ready. In November plastic is put down over drip tubes; the plastic reflects
the light to keep the insects away so there is less need for insecticides.
Tomato seeds are ordered and sent to seed planting houses where the plants
start to grow. They are then shipped by trucks to the farm where they are set
by machines and workers between March 8 and March15. Rye grass has already
been planted between the rows to protect the baby plants from the wind. Next,
the stakes are driven in the rows between the plants by machines. After the plants start to grow, strings are
woven between and around the plants. A special crew of workers come in for the
planting, staking, and stringing. Weather is always a factor during the growing
process. Planting started and stopped
this year due to the cold snaps which thankfully have not injured the crop
unlike the two years back to back in the 60’s when killing frosts happened on
April 21st and April 20th. Of course, there is always the chance of
too much rain, or rain during harvest or a myriad of other things to get past
each year. The Sanders family has planted over one million plants this year on
400 net acres of 1000 acres total on the farm.
As one of the Sanders told me, I do not gamble at casinos, I gamble by
being a farmer. The Sanders Family will ship over a
half million boxes this year.
The crop
takes 88 – 90 days to mature. The tomatoes are harvested beginning on June
5, but the workers arrive on June 1 because the weather may be a
factor.
Approximately 300 people work in the fields picking and 150 work in the
packing houses. The pickers in the field pick everything on a bush and place
the tomatoes in plastic buckets that hold approximately 35-pounds each. They
are then placed in plastic bins loaded on a truck that will take the 1000-pound
load to the packing house where they are unloaded and washed in a bleach/water
solution. They then proceed onto conveyor belts. There they will be sorted by
size, color and grade. Only green tomatoes can be shipped, because handling red
tomatoes isn’t feasible. They are then placed into cardboard boxes with glue on
the top edges, packed by a special crew on pallets, and loaded onto waiting 18
wheelers by fork lifts. One truck
contains 20 pallets, each pallet holds 80, 25-pound boxes. The trucks are driven across the street to
the annex or ripening shed. There are 130 rooms in the annex. The pallets from
a truck are placed in a room where they are cooled to 58 degrees and then
gassed with ethylene gas (the same gas an apple gives off when ripening) This
causes the tomatoes to turn pink. The buyers like to dictate the ripeness of
their tomatoes. Claudio, an employee of the farm, determines when the room of
tomatoes are the ripeness that the buyer desires. They are loaded back on
an eighteen-wheeler and sent to their destination somewhere east of the
Mississippi river. Most end up in grocery stores and in salads in restaurants. None go to
processing plants. They have also ended up in some rather exclusive places.
Here is a great trivia question: what do the QE2 and Seaside Farm on St. Helena
Island have in common? Answer: The
following used to be printed on the great ship’s menu: “Made with Seaside Farm
Brand tomatoes.” Ross is quoted as saying “We had
a great business with the Queens (QE2) going back and forth to Europe. They’d pick up a truckload of our tomatoes
and bring them up to New York. They’d
pay you a premium for good tomatoes. We
always took great pride in Seaside Farm tomatoes—top of the market. It paid off when things got tough. We try to
produce a higher quality tomato than anyone else because we’re a smaller farm
than anyone else.”
After the tomatoes are picked and
shipped the crews then pull up the stakes and bale them to be reused for 5
years. The plastic is pulled up and
baled by a special machine to be recycled.
The irrigation hose is also removed and reused as possible. The rows are then plowed under and ready for
another year. The crops are rotated to
prevent soil borne diseases.
Of the 400 acres planted in tomatoes,
150 acres are replanted in watermelons for a fall crop. Watermelon plants are planted as soon as the
old tomato plants are removed.
The ripe red
tomatoes have always been discarded because they are too soft to be
shipped. They would be loaded onto dump
trucks and taken back to somewhere on the farm and buried. I say the reds have
always been discarded because this past year the 5th generation has
come up with a plan to make use of a once discarded perfectly good
commodity. They decided to try their
hand at making Bloody Mary mix. They hired a chef from Charleston and a chef
from Savannah to put together a recipe with guidance from the family. They
settled on a final recipe and had it made and bottled under the name of Seaside
Grown in Charleston. They made an initial batch of three thousand bottles. It
was such a success that they are planning to increase that to 150,000 bottles
this year. It was only marketed locally
with mostly word of mouth. They will also be make a spicy variety named after
Granddaddy Gus who I hear was quiet the spicy guy. The plan is also to make salsa this year. This year the products will be made and bottled
on St. Helena at the co-op kitchen. The
plan is to take the product regionally.
They just attended the Bloody Mary
festival in Nashville (who knew there was such a thing) and placed 3rd
overall. They were the only bottled mix
to ever place, as most mixes represented are made individually by bartenders or
restaurants. Each jar is made from two
pounds of fresh tomatoes that have been cored and then combined with other
ingredients to make the final product.
Most bottled bloody Mary mixes start with tomato paste and water. This product, as you may have discovered, has
lots of pulp and seeds. Many customers
use it to cook with or serve cold as gazpacho.
Tomatoes
have supported the Sanders family for four generations. Farming has provided a
wonderful environment to raise families and they wish to continue as long as
possible, but with more people in the family and the encroachment of people in
the area they have to be innovative.
Chemicals
used in agriculture are not nearly as dangerous as people think. The farm has
been draining directly into an estuary, for 3 generations, which was and still
is pristine. However, with people getting their information from 60 minutes,
there is a danger that regulations and the Clean Water Task force recommending
retention ponds as a best management practice, could decrease the available land
below profitable levels. Many say that we need to strike a balance between
those who love the environment and those who love property rights. Mac was born
in Beaufort as was his father, grandfather, and probably his great-grandfather.
He says he has puff mud between his toes that he hopes he will never get
out. While there are people in Beaufort
who love this area as much as he, there is no one who loves it more. Love for
this environment and respect for property rights are not mutually exclusive. Being
the daughter of a farmer, gives me much respect for this family and their
practices. I hope Beaufort County does
not regulate them out of business. Farming in a sea of people can be difficult.
The land is their most precious asset and, they would never do anything to
diminish the value.
