America's Heartland - Episode 111

Episode 111
	Jason Shoultz visits two tobacco farmers to learn how they’re making the transition from tobacco to alternative crops like strawberries and flowers. For a time in New England and the northern Midwest, round barns were all the rage on the farm. Pat McConahay discovers one area in Wisconsin where many round barns still stand and are a source of pride in their communities. Paul Ryan discovers how some ranchers are cooperating in the use of a novel solution: sheep ranchers “lend” their flocks, who love the stuff, to cattlemen – and the range is cleared of spurge, at least for a while. Pat McConahay visits an affluent Florida couple and the farm they built to better the lot of farmers everywhere. Drive along certain highways of the Southwest, and you may spy a 20-foot high, startlingly realistic painting of a farmer in his field, a cow, or perhaps an infant playing with a life-sized tractor.

Beyond Tobacco
Not long after the Whitakers started growing tobacco, they started seeing an uncertain future in the crop. In the 1980s fewer people were lighting up in the United States because of health concerns while foreign tobacco growers began undercutting U.S. tobacco farmers. The Whitakers had to do something, so they branched out and began growing produce such as tomatoes.

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Round Barns
There’s something both charming and nostalgic about old barns. They bring back fond memories of a simpler time. But contrary to popular belief, not all barns are rectangular.

Wooly Weedeaters
Leafy spurge is one of the major invasive weeds in the United States. And if left alone, the spurge grows out of control and takes over. Herbicides sometimes work but they’re expensive and many ranchers worry about the environmental risks. But nature’s offering a safer and surprising solution.

Harvest for Humanity
They are the backbone of American agriculture—the men and women who toil in the fields to put food on our tables. It’s not an easy life. And that’s what Dick and Florence Nogaj (pronounced “nojay”) discovered during a vacation to southwest Florida and the little town of Immokalee.

Ag Artist
Artist John Cerney’s gallery is the great outdoors. He creates his own brand of commercial, billboard-sized art that adorns farm fields throughout California’s fertile Salinas Valley and beyond.

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The American Farm Bureau Foundation for Agriculture, Farm Credit, and the United Soybean Board make presentation of America's Heartland possible.

Additional production and promotion assistance is provided by
The American Soybean Association, National Corn Growers Association, National Cotton Council, U.S. Grains Council,
National Association of Wheat Growers, and the National FFA Organization.