South Carolina Focus

South Carolina's farming industry remains a stalwart economic engine. With approximately 25,000 farms over 4.9 million acres of land, the Palmetto State's agricultural community maintains its relevance in South Carolinians' day-to-day lives. In a changing world, though, South Carolina's farming industry still continues to face the same old problems that it has for years. A common denominator for a successful crop is the weather, and this equaled a negative for this year's summer produce crop in the Palmetto State. That's because a devastating late May heatwave brought temperatures up to a high of 100 degrees, causing extensive damage to popular crops like tomatoes, watermelons, squash, and corn. Willie Capehart, a small truck crop farmer from Bamberg, South Carolina, said that both his squash and cucumbers received significant damage from the heat wave. Capehart said that he planted those crops two weeks late, but the rain did help. "The rain was good, but it came a little too late,"