Expert in the field
Meet David Shields and learn why he and his colleagues at the Carolina Gold Rice Foundation are on a mission to bring back South Carolina’s best heirloom crops.
Photo by Milton Morris
David Shields
Age: 68.
Resides in: Columbia.
Claim to fame: Chair, Carolina Gold Rice Foundation (carolinagoldricefoundation.org); Professor of English, University of South Carolina.
On a mission: The foundation researches and promotes cultivation of heirloom crops, providing long-lost farming knowledge and seed—for free—to communities seeking to reconnect with the state’s agricultural and culinary past.
A matter of taste: “I think the world of heirloom grains, because they don’t lend themselves to mass mono-cropping, give you a life that’s manageable, and connect you with ingredients and taste that have great resonance in the community.”
It might be said of David Shields that he is, quite literally, a man of many tastes.
Seashore Blackseed Rye, Purple Straw Wheat, Brunswick Black Oats, Bere Barley, Hicks Mulberry, Red Bearded Upland Rice, Carolina African Runner Peanuts—these are just a few of the heirloom grain crops that Shields, as chairman of the Carolina Gold Rice Foundation, has helped restore in South Carolina and beyond.
The Carolina Gold Rice Foundation is a coalition of millers, geneticists, farmers and historians dedicated to restoring traditional farming practices and reintroducing the heirloom crops that fed generations of South Carolinians. For his part, Shields scours old agricultural journals, farmers’ instruction manuals, classified ads, seed catalogs, seed banks and anywhere the clues of past crops can be found.
“Sometimes you’re running down the highway and see this extra tall corn growing on the side of the road,” he says. “And you know by the sight of all that corn that’s it’s an antique corn. You go up and ask the farmer, ‘Can I have a few ears?’”
Once the grains are located and identified, Shields and his colleagues go about the rigorous process of ensuring the seeds can be cultivated year after year. He sees this as important and necessary work in an age when modern plant breeding is often driven by traits like the ability to withstand roller milling, rather than by flavor and sustainability.
“In cultures all across the world, for hundreds of human generations and thousands of plant generations, seed selection was for flavor,” Shields says. “And since flavor is equated on a certain level with nutrition, in this large picture of understanding, the oldest forms embody the wisdom of entire cultures about flavor and nutrition.”