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By John Bruce
 Campbell Coxe
Sure enough, a rich, dark and toasty grain aroma curls through the downwind breeze. “This smells like it’s going to be an extremely good year,” Coxe says.
Coxe applies his fascination with Palmetto State history to his business. His Carolina Plantation Rice has become the first business in South Carolina to revive commercial rice production almost a century after dying out. What’s more, Carolina Plantation Rice is the first and only business in South Carolina to be recognized nationally as being Green-e certified as an environmentally friendly user of renewable energy.
“Carolina Plantation Rice is a unique gift that says South Carolina,” says the ruddy-faced Coxe, back in his office in Mont Clare, a remote farming community north of Darlington. Coxe first grew the rice in the mid-1990s on the Great Pee Dee River as an experiment and gave it away as Christmas presents to family members. Impressed by its unique aroma and taste, “they decided, what a great idea, and started giving it to their friends,” Coxe recalls.
Reducing greenhouse gases
Carolina Plantation Rice purchases renewable energy from Pee Dee Electric Cooperative in the form of “Green Power” to irrigate and process its crops to produce rice, grits, cow peas (for hopping John), corn meal and seafood breading products. Green Power is electricity generated from landfill gas.
“I read about Green Power in Living in South Carolina Magazine,” Coxe says. “At first, I thought that we’re a small company and that Green Power was targeted to the BMWs of the state. But I started looking at it, and while Green Power costs a little more, it means a lot to us and our customers.”
The state-owned utility Santee Cooper has announced a fourth landfill gas power plant and eventually plans to generate 45 megawatts of Green Power at landfills across the state. A megawatt is roughly enough power for 600 co-op-served homes in South Carolina. Cooperative members support Green Power by opting to make block purchases of $3 or more per month. Green Power revenues are used to expand and develop renewable projects.
“We’re very proud to serve Carolina Plantation Rice and to have them as our first Green-e certified Green Power Partner,” says Jeff Singletary, residential & commercial marketing manager at Pee Dee Electric Cooperative. “They produce quality products and practice notable environmental stewardship. It’s a fitting partnership.”
The Green-e logo is the nationally recognized symbol for certified renewable energy. Green-e is the nation’s leading independent certification and verification program for renewable energy and companies that use renewable energy.
“Our customer base is a very aware group of people who are environmentally concerned,” Coxe says. “Green Power not only protects the environment, but promotes us. We have an environmentally friendly twist. All our packaging is biodegradable. It’s natural.”
Now in its 11th yearly crop, Carolina Plantation Rice sells out every year to appreciative customers across the nation. To fill the swelling demand, Coxe is seeking out more would-be rice planters to augment his crops and those supplied by two growers he already has contracted. Lindsey Guy of Camden grows rice on the Wateree River. Edwin Cooper plants rice on the Great Pee Dee River, about 80 miles downstream from Coxe’s operation, at White House Plantation outside Georgetown. White House, as Coxe points out, was one of the last South Carolina plantations to grow rice after the Civil War.
The basic ingredients for rice cultivation —fresh water, flat land and clay-based soil —are plentiful in many parts of South Carolina. Coxe pumps 100 million gallons of river water each spring and summer to flood his fields from four to six inches deep. Rice is harvested around the peak of hurricane season, during September, by a biodiesel-powered combine equipped with tracks. Carolina Plantation Rice customers are not big-box shoppers, Coxe explains. “They want a boutique-type, gourmet product, like none other in the world. One of the neat things people really like is that the product is totally produced, handled and packaged on our farm. It’s true self sufficiency, the meaning of the old plantation system,” Coxe explains.
Coxe grows Della, a strain of rice with the most aromatic flavor, which was introduced from Pakistan to New Orleans by the French.
Family affair
Besides Plumfield Plantation, where Carolina Rice Plantation is grown, the 20,000-acre Coxe family’s Skufful Farms consists of a forest products operation, run by Coxe’s father, Tom, plus Robyn’s Neck Trophy Club, a winter hunting preserve. The six-person staff of Carolina Plantation Rice switches hats in the winter to provide three-day package hunting trips complete with cooks and a lodge with maid service to guests, mostly from the northeast.  Brooke Byrd
Coxe serves as board secretary for the Carolina Gold Rice Foundation, a Charleston based group dedicated to advancing Carolina Gold Rice and other heirloom grains. The foundation is committed to raising awareness, promoting educational and research activities and serving as an information resource center on heirloom grains.
Carolina Gold, which Coxe grows and sells, was the leading strain of rice grown in South Carolina during colonial times. The rice arrived from Africa and became the source of great wealth before the
Civil War.
Slaves from the Senegambia area of West Africa were then traded through the port of Charleston. Slaves from this region carried the highest prices for their rice-growing expertise. They labored on plantations around Georgetown, Charleston and Savannah. From the slaves, planters learned how to dyke marshes and irrigate their fields. South Carolina rice became less profitable with the loss of slave labor after the Civil War. Commercial rice production died out completely in South Carolina
after the turn of the 20th century.
Today, most domestic rice is grown in Arkansas, where Coxe has often visited to learn about rice planting and processing techniques. The big difference between the rice grown in Arkansas and on the Great Pee Dee River is that Arkansas rice is warehoused and rapidly loses its natural flavor.
For more information on Carolina Plantation products, please access carolinaplantationrice.com or call, toll-free, (877) 742-3496.
More ways to give green
Instead of a multi-tool contraption for him or a box of chocolates for her, give green this year, by:
• Putting Green Power on your gift list. Contact your electric cooperative and ask about purchasing a block or more of Green Power, an investment in renewable energy.
• Giving green lighting. By giving a compact fluorescent light bulb to replace a standard bulb, you’ll give someone more light for less money and energy. |
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