Strawberry production increasing in Southeast

ENIGMA, Ga. -- Like many Southern farmers, Tim and Steve McMillan relied on flue-cured tobacco to sustain them when the prices for other commodities plunged.

But when the government slashed the U.S. flue-cured tobacco crop by 43 percent, the brothers begin to have doubts about tobacco's future. They decided it was time to diversify.

The McMillans joined an increasing number of tobacco farmers who now grow strawberries.

"What we were trying to do is find a little niche," Tim McMillan said. "We had lost tobacco in the quota cuts. We wanted ... to help supplement our income. Strawberries have nowhere replaced the tobacco income we lost."

Southern strawberry production has been increasing for about 15 years, with Florida ranking second behind California and North Carolina in fourth place behind Oregon.

Tobacco growers began seriously considering strawberries after the USDA reduced the production quota by 43 percent from 1997 to 2000. The quota, based on the purchasing intentions of domestic cigarette makers, the three-year export average and reserve stocks, sets the production limit for the U.S. crop.

This spring, in their fourth year of production, the McMillans have a 5-acre strawberry patch near Enigma, a tiny, south-central Georgia farm town.

Ripe from the vine

Families from surrounding towns visit the McMillan farm to pick strawberries and give their children an agrarian experience.

Visitors amble down rows of knee-high plants, plucking the sweet, red fruit that many associate with spring. When their baskets are full, they pay up. There's a scarecrow and a playground for the kids and a trail to a nearby pond.

"They love it," McMillan said. "The advantage of you-pick is that the fruit comes ripe straight off the vine."

Desmond Layne, a Clemson University strawberry specialist, said strawberries have proven to be a good fit for South Carolina's peach growers. The berries provide income before the growers start selling peaches.

"It's profitable and it helps get people to the market earlier," he said.

While the McMillan farm is located in a rural area where tractors and cotton-gins are common sights, strawberries have also taken root in metropolitan areas such as Atlanta. Strawberry farmers don't need much land and they sell more when they are closer to urban centers.

Gina Fernandez, a strawberry specialist at North Carolina State University, said her state has about 2,000 acres devoted to the berry.

Some of the increase was the result of tobacco growers diversifying, but a lot of it resulted from the research work at her university and marketing activities of the growers, she said.

With 27,000 acres, California grows more than 80 percent of the nation's strawberries -- enough each year to circle the world berry-to-berry 15 times, says the California Strawberry Commission.

In California, strawberries have become an $850 million crop, Hansen said.