Why a SC peach farm won a $10M COVID-19 contract
A peach farm in Saluda County has won a $10-million federal contract to send fruit and vegetable boxes to food banks and other aid organizations around the South as part of a coronavirus relief program.
Titan Farms Inc., a peach grower in Ridge Spring, received the funds as part of an ongoing U.S. Department of Agriculture initiative to distribute up to $3 billion in healthy produce to families struggling amid the pandemic.
The $10 million is one of the largest COVID-19-related federal contracts awarded in South Carolina this year, according to procurement data released by the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee.
Ross Williams, director of packaging operations and food safety at Titan Farms, said the company has already distributed about 2.3 million pounds of produce under the contract.
By the end of August, Titan Farms has to provide roughly 286,000 fruit and vegetable boxes to various groups in the Southeast, he said, which amounts to more than 5.2 million pounds of food.
Some of the farm’s peaches were recently sent to Beaufort County.
Constance Martin-Witter, executive director of the Bluffton Community Soup Kitchen, said Titan Farms has delivered food to Campbell Chapel AME Church for the past two Thursdays. The soup kitchen hosts a food pantry at the church.
“It’s beautiful,” Martin-Witter said Friday. “There’s no spoilage. … It’s really getting food into areas that normally wouldn’t have those options.”
Titan Farms has also sent boxes to the Lowcountry Food Bank in the Charleston area and the Harvest Hope Food Bank in Columbia, Williams said.
Some of the food is being distributed in Florida, Georgia, Kentucky and North Carolina, he added.
The company typically packs two to four pounds of peaches into every food box, Williams said. Vegetables such as onions, potatoes or sweet corn are also included in boxes. Titan Farms has over 6,000 acres of peaches and more than 1,000 acres of vegetables.
The company buys some of the boxes’ vegetables from different companies, though, to help meet the demand, he said.
“We’re passionate about getting fresh produce to those who need it most,” Williams said.
Titan Farms — the largest peach grower on the East Coast, according to its website — didn’t win a COVID-19 contract during the USDA relief program’s first round of funding, called “Farmers to Families.” But the federal agency later contacted Titan Farms and asked if the company wanted to participate in the initiative’s second round, Williams said.
The USDA awarded up to $202 million in new contracts for the program’s second round from July 1 to Aug. 31, according to the agency. It also approved up to $1.27 billion in extended contracts.
“These distributors will help direct food to underserved areas and will have an increased focus on Opportunity Zones,” the agency said of the new contracts.
An Opportunity Zone is an economically-distressed community where “new investments, under certain conditions, may be eligible for preferential tax treatment,” according to the Internal Revenue Service.
The $10-million Titan Farms contract is the second-biggest COVID-19-related federal contract awarded for projects in South Carolina this year, according to PRAC data last updated July 23.
The largest contract went to an international engineering firm with an office in Greenville called Fluor Intercontinental Inc. That company won over $12 million to build a COVID-19 staging area for Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island.
