{"id":153,"date":"2021-09-29T17:58:42","date_gmt":"2021-09-29T17:58:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dev.magazine.cals.ncsu.edu\/?p=153"},"modified":"2022-11-23T23:48:48","modified_gmt":"2022-11-23T23:48:48","slug":"n-c-s-export-niche-grows","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/magazine.cals.ncsu.edu\/n-c-s-export-niche-grows\/","title":{"rendered":"North Carolina’s Export Niche Grows"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

What started out as a 15-acre experiment for six-generation, family-owned Scott Farms<\/a> has turned into 4,500 acres of sweetpotatoes a year and a profitable export crop.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dewey Scott, an alumnus of NC State\u2019s Executive Farm Management program<\/a>, and his family\u2019s operation in Lucama, North Carolina, are dedicated to providing quality sweetpotatoes to North Americans and Europeans. Once associated mostly with U.S. Thanksgiving and Christmas meals, sweetpotatoes are now a year-round superfood for people around the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Primarily focused on domestic shipping in the 1980s, the Scotts began delving into international markets around 1999. In 2018, the North Carolina Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services named Scott Farms Exporter of the Year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cIt was trial and error,\u201d Scott says. \u201cIt\u2019s not a grandiose story. I just thought, \u2018Hey, wouldn\u2019t it be cool to send sweetpotatoes overseas?\u2019 It was neat, going to different markets because at that time, sweetpotatoes were extremely exotic in the UK.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scott says they started shipping to a few people, eventually visiting folks in the UK and developing relationships with buyers. Business started booming and Scott Farms opened two offices in Europe: one in the UK in 2006, followed by a second office in Germany.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once focused on domestic markets, Scott Farms now focuses on achieving a balance between domestic and international exports. The farm grows and ships three main varieties of sweetpotatoes: Covington, Murasaki (Japanese) and Purple.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe\u2019re 15 years into this and it continues to grow every year. The product is great and that\u2019s what drives the demand,\u201d says Scott. The quality of the product has a lot to do with variety and breeding research done by NC State University.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve offered our farm for various research projects, ranging from variety development, fertilization to yield and weed management. We have a very good relationship with the researchers at NC State. It\u2019s truly a partnership that\u2019s instrumental in the international and domestic arena,\u201d says Scott.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Blake Brown, Hugh C. Kiger Professor of Agricultural and Resource Economics, says the partnership between NC State and producers drives export growth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cThe progress that\u2019s been made is because the sweetpotato growers have supported breeding research and variety research from the university. That\u2019s actually a large part of it. Europeans haven\u2019t been able to adopt these varieties yet. Variety improvement and the breeding program is a really important part of the export success of the sweetpotato,\u201d Brown says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And the research has proven to be valuable to farmers across the state, including Scott and his family operation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhen you\u2019re dealing with a number of different countries, different groups of people have different taste or size preferences. What one country values most, another might not. This allows us to create markets and opportunities for products that may not be sought after here in the states,\u201d Scott says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

North Carolina\u2019s location on the East Coast means shipping times across the Atlantic are shorter. In addition to developing popular sweetpotato varieties, NC State experts developed a postharvest treatment for the Covington sweetpotato, the most popular variety in North Carolina. By changing the curing process, NC State researchers determined a method to greatly reduce internal necrosis in the variety.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But extending the shelf life of the crop hasn\u2019t been the only snag for producers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSweetpotatoes keep really well until you wash them,\u201d says Brown. The European Union regulations sharply lowered the tolerances for a fungicide used to protect sweetpotato quality and now require them to be washed prior to shipping. NC State researchers are in the process of finding ways to keep high-quality sweetpotato exports traveling from North Carolina. Those involved with the project have been awarded a $1.2 million grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture\u2019s Foreign Agricultural Service, proving how important this crop is to North Carolina.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSweetpotatoes are the state vegetable and a very big part of Eastern North Carolina agriculture,\u201d says Scott. \u201cThe sweetpotato industry, as a whole, has an exciting future. There\u2019s still a lot of growth left for this product.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n