Mike Couick
The holidays are a time of year when the spirit of goodwill to all reminds us to give gifts to the needy. For Taylor Clarke, founder of GrowingSC in Allendale County, the holiday season was also a time of year that helped him decide to make a significant impact on the lives of his neighbors.
Clarke was volunteering with a local church, handing out Thanksgiving turkeys and groceries to those in need, when he began to understand that hunger and malnutrition were year-round problems in his community.
“It was the best way I could’ve spent my Thanksgiving weekend,” he says. “However, when I spoke with some of the recipients, I learned that this distribution was the only time in the entire month when they were able to provide a healthy balanced source of food for their families. That’s when I realized that something had to change.”
Allendale County presents a daunting task when it comes to feeding the hungry and malnourished. Classified by the U.S. Department of Agriculture as a “food desert,” the county has just one grocery store for 11,000 people. And with more than 30 percent of residents living below the poverty line, a significant portion of the county lacks the resources to buy food.
One in 10 people in Allendale County lack access to a vehicle and live more than 10 miles round trip from the store. With limited shopping options, these residents have no choice but to buy calorie-dense foods filled with sodium and saturated fats. As a result, the county has the highest rate of diabetes in South Carolina (roughly 30 percent) and some of the highest rates of malnutrition and obesity in the state.
A graduate of the University of South Carolina’s Darla Moore School of Business, Clarke saw these challenges as an opportunity. He founded GrowingSC as a food security and economic development council with the motto, “Making South Carolina a better place to live, work and eat.”
“What my colleagues and I found interesting about Allendale County was that it had the natural propensity to be an agricultural breadbasket,” Clarke says. “The county is blessed with very fertile soil and farmers have been tilling the land for generations. We wanted to connect farmers to those who were food-insecure right in their backyard.”
Clarke and his team called a series of meetings with all the farmers in Allendale County to uncover the barriers preventing them from expanding their agribusinesses, then worked to establish a comprehensive plan to increase food security throughout the county.
By applying business expertise to a persistent problem in the local community, GrowingSC works to shepherd one of the most economically depressed counties in the state toward greater food security. Since 2017, the organization has attracted about $20,000 in investments to Allendale County to expand distribution of nutritious, locally grown food.
“We’ve renovated the Allendale farmers market to turn it into a cost-effective thriving business, allowing us to cut costs for local farmers while increasing food freshness for customers,” Clarke says. “And we’re working with agribusiness consultants to turn our suppliers’ farms into lean businesses.”
GrowingSC has even found a solution to the distance problem of Allendale County’s one grocery store: The council introduced a climate-controlled mobile farmers market that provides fresh fruits and vegetables to people who don’t have reliable transportation.
“If they can’t come to us, we’ll bring it to them,” Clarke says. “Our world is constantly changing with new opportunities and challenges. No single individual has a monopoly on knowledge, but by learning from each other and working together, we can really make an impact.”
For more about the organization, visit growingsc.org. To learn more about food insecurity in your community—and the organizations that can use your help this holiday season and year-round—visit foodbanks.net/state/sc.html.