SC Ag Commissioner Weathers Encourages All to Attend 27th Annual Southeast Vegetable & Fruit Expo

The 27th Annual Southeast Vegetable and Fruit Expo will be November 27th and 28th at the Kingston Plantation at Myrtle Beach. This is an event that offers a lot of in-depth educational sessions, and the South Carolina Department of Agriculture, along with NC Department of Agriculture, NC State and Clemson work together to educate and inform fruit and vegetable growers from the Carolinas on the latest in the industry. Commissioner Weathers encourages all to attend, programs are designed to help growers of all sizes, not just large-scale operations.

For more information got to agriculturesc.gov and look under Hot Topics for the Southeast Vegetable & Fruit Expo.

“The Southeast Vegetable and Fruit Expo at Myrtle Beach does cover both Carolinas and their audience is growing. We will have North Carolina vegetable growers as well as South Carolina, NC State, Clemson, all of them looking to see where the industry is headed and give some valuable insights to our producers.
 

We have the important topic of marketing covered. Fred Broughton works with our fruit and vegetable association. He will be there to talk about local marketing and what a grower needs to be doing to position themselves, including best management practices and marketing to the consumer.
GAP, Good Agricultural Practices, is something that is becoming more important to fruit and vegetable growers, especially depending on the market you want to get into. For instance, a school market, or certain retailers you really have to think strongly about getting GAP certified. That is where the department is playing a key role with Weatherly Thomas helping to train. And our fruit and vegetable inspection arm does the actual audits so we try to take a person from start to finish. We have had great interest in the training program and we hope to get even more.
 

The conference is set up to cater to growers large and small. There will be something for everyone, from production practices, irrigation, GAP, marketing, financial management and other topics.
 

The 27th Annual Southeast Vegetable and Fruit Expo will be November 27th and 28th at the Kingston Plantation at Myrtle Beach. For more information folks can go to agriculturesc.gov and look under Hot Topics for the Southeast Vegetable & Fruit Expo.”