Back in the third ever episode of Where The Food Comes From, we visited a remarkable farming family, the Bradfords of Sumter, SC. Then, they were still growing the same crops their ancestors had for 200 years, from the same seeds, on the same land. Dad Nat, Mom Bette and their five kids formed the...
American family farmers are dreamers. They’re do-ers, too, of course. Nobody works harder than farmers. But in the world of modern agriculture, it’s getting harder and harder for Mom and Pop farms — the backbone America was built on — to get ahead. Enter Heartland Food Products Group, makers of...
So you always thought we invented cold cut and cheese platters in modern times? Hold your roll — charcuterie is an ancient art that stretches back to 14th Century France! But it's had a real renaissance of late. To make great charcuterie, you have to have great meats. And we found an amazing...
It's the oldest story we know — the birds and the bees. We don't need the birds to grow our food, but without the bees we'd be in a lot of trouble. About a third of all crops require direct pollination by bees, including 70 of the top 100 primary sources of our food. Take away the bees, you take...
We import a lot of the food we eat. Fortunately for farmers, we export a lot, too. We think of endless lines of trucks streaming in across our southern border bringing in fruits and veggies from Central and South America, and that certainly happens. But for longer trips, larger loads, nothing...
The Vidalia onion has been around for some 90 years — but no one outside of the area ever heard of it until the mid-1980s when it became available nationally. That doesn't mean there weren't farmers and farm families in the Vidalia region who'd been plowing the land there for generations. It just...
Fifty years ago, no one had even heard of a Vidalia onion: it's the result of maybe the happiest accident in food and farming history. Seems back in the 1930s, a farmer in Vidalia, GA had promised an onion crop to the local Piggly Wiggly. A late freeze took out the crop. No more onion seedlings...
Millions of kids spent the first few years of their lives saying “Yuck” to broccoli. Pres. George Bush Sr. didn’t like it either. But most of us grow up to find it quite tasty. And over the last few years, we’ve come to realize just what a nutritional powerhouse this flowery veggie is — along with...
We spend most of our time in the dirt and on the farm, and that won’t change. But we wondered if our friends in the wild-caught seafood industry might deal with some of the same problems and challenges our farmer friends on land do. The answer? Oh yeah — and maybe then some. If you’ve ever been to...
Watermelon is grown around the world and in 44 U.S. states. It’s one of the most popular global fruits. But year-in and year-out, tiny Cordele, GA is named Watermelon Capitol of the World for the sweetness and volume of watermelon that flows from there — there’s even a giant state of a watermelon...
