Clarendon County’s agricultural heritage is taking center stage in this year’s race for South Carolina Commissioner of Agriculture. With three candidates connected to the county seeking the office, The Manning Times continues its feature series spotlighting their roots, experience in agriculture and visions for the future of the industry. This week marks the second installment, with the final candidate expected next week.
Long before he ever considered public office, Jeremy Cannon was a farm kid who wanted nothing more than to spend every chance he could in the fields.
Born and raised in Turbeville, Cannon said he grew up as the youngest of five children in a third-generation farming family, surrounded by the rhythms of the land and the people who worked it alongside them.
“This town and farm has always been home,” Cannon said.
He remembers riding in the laps of anyone on the farm who would let him and driving a tractor at age five, even when his feet could not yet reach the pedals. Growing up in the 1980s, Cannon said the family farm included workers of different backgrounds, but he remembers them as one extended family, all united by the same goal.
“We were all one big family with one goal of ‘just trying to make it,’” he said.
That love for farm life came early. Cannon said he loved it so much as a child that he would ask to stay home from school on his birthday just to spend the day working on the farm.
“There’s just something about the dirt on your hands, the sights and smells of the farm, and the value of hard work that gets under your nails and in your blood,” he said.
Cannon, now a fourth-generation farmer, said he grew up idolizing his father, along with his uncle and the other farmers around him.
“My dad, Nebo Cannon as many know him, was my hero from the beginning,” Cannon said. “I just assumed that farming is what the lucky ones did for a living.”
Today, Cannon says that lifetime of firsthand agricultural experience is what sets him apart as he seeks the office of South Carolina Commissioner of Agriculture.
Unlike candidates whose backgrounds are rooted in policy, advocacy or education, Cannon frames his candidacy around the realities of day-to-day farm life. He describes the modern farmer as far more than someone who plants and harvests.
“Some use the term ‘farmer’ superficially, some use it as a derogatory term, but I know it as its true worth,” Cannon said.
He said a farmer is often the CEO, CFO, human resources department, mechanic, accountant, truck driver and equipment operator all at once — responsibilities he knows firsthand from years spent balancing budgets, hauling loads and working through the risks of each growing season.
“I’ve looked at balance sheets and profit and loss statements, not just during my classes at USC for my business admin degree but each year when the numbers are real and my life and livelihood as well as my employees are on the line,” he said.
For Cannon, the turning point that transformed him from farmer to advocate came in the historic Flood of 2015, when Clarendon County was among the hardest-hit areas in the state.
He said Cannon Farms in Turbeville received 27 inches of rain in three days, devastating crops that were still in the field during what should have been harvest season.
“It was total crop loss,” Cannon said. “It was a total income loss for many farmers across our state.”
Within weeks, Cannon said it became clear to him that agriculture needed a stronger voice in state government. He was called on to testify before the South Carolina House Ways and Means Committee and later at a congressional field hearing hosted by U.S. Sen. Tim Scott. He also gave multiple interviews to newspapers, radio and television outlets, helping explain the realities of agricultural loss and why crop insurance does not function like home or auto insurance.
That advocacy helped lead to the creation of the state’s Farm Aid Fund in 2016, which the General Assembly passed despite a veto from then-Gov. Nikki Haley.
Cannon said his work did not stop there.
Later that same year, he began pushing to bring a cucumber buying station back to New Zion after the longtime site closed in 2015. Calling it a major blow for area farmers, Cannon said he made calls and even traveled to Canada “on my farmer dime” in an effort to secure new business.
That work, he said, ultimately helped lead to Palmetto Pickle in New Zion, which now contracts nearly 3,000 acres and generates more than $5 million annually for South Carolina farmers.
“I have learned in the past 10 years that not only can I do the job as SC Commissioner of Agriculture, but I’ve done it,” Cannon said. “I’ve been the voice for ag in Columbia, in Washington, D.C., and internationally. I’ve brought and helped develop a market here in our state.”
With current Agriculture Commissioner Hugh Weathers retiring, Cannon said he believes the moment is right for a candidate grounded in farm experience and rural leadership.
“It’s been 10-plus tough years, and I’ve spent a majority of them knowing we need help in agriculture,” Cannon said. “We need an ag voice.”
For Cannon, that mission is personal as much as political.
“At the end of the day, my desire to protect and promote agriculture has driven me here,” he said. “Our history and heritage, both of the state and our families, is worth protecting and worth fighting for.”
