Among the many problems with the South Carolina Department of Agriculture’s Certified SC Grown program is that it spends tax dollars to promote a specific industry.
If SC farmers are getting state assistance to help them sell their goods, why shouldn’t SC steel manufacturers and SC paper makers expect to get the same benefit?
The latest phase of the Certified SC Grown effort is the Palmettovore campaign, designed by Columbia ad agency Chernoff Newman, which seeks to convince SC consumers to eat only South Carolina-grown produce and products.
And as if the program weren’t silly enough, it’s apparently completely unnecessary, according to a story in The Myrtle Beach Sun News.
A headline on a report in the publication earlier this week that focused on South Carolina-grown products read: “Demand rising for local produce.”
If that’s the case, and SC Agriculture Commissioner Hugh Weather asserts as much, then one has to question why South Carolina is putting scarce tax dollars into a program that’s apparently redundant.
“The rage of eating and buying local has sparked a new campaign by the state called Palmettovore,” according to The Sun News.
That would mean demand for locally grown products was already in place before the state spent tens of thousands of tax dollars on the Palmettovore effort.
In other words, consumers were already aware of the high quality of SC-grown products, meaning Palmettovore is repetitive and wasteful, as the SC Policy Council points out here.
The Cotton Boll Conspiracy 