S.C. Forestry Commission Summit

The S.C. Forestry Commission (SCFC) invited leaders of the Agribusiness world to convene at their Harbison State Forest Education Center in Columbia to discuss the economic contributions that affect the state of South Carolina. The purpose of the meeting was to set out an agenda for the alliance of forestry members present. Agribusiness is defined as agriculture and forestry together, which the Darla Moore Business School at USC has shown impacts the state with $30 million in revenue annually. Gene Kodama, state forester with the SCFC proposed that forestry provides roughly 5% of the SC Gross State Product, and showed that the SCFC only receives .2% of the state budget. The Southeast has a lot of pine woods that stretch from Maryland to Texas, and S.C. feels it is well positioned to be a leader in the agribusiness field - perhaps generating as much as $50 million dollars by the year 2020. A new Biomass plant is being built in Newberry by RollCast Energy and there is great hope that clean and green energy can be produced in this form to benefit the public.