America’s heartland has long depended on the Mississippi River to get the harvest to market and provide irrigation for farms and crops that line this vital American artery. Paul Ryan takes us down the Mississippi to meet the farmers who depend on the river for the success of their farming efforts.
Pat McConahay travels back in time to explore the rich agricultural past of one Missouri town and discovers that Hannibal’s history has more to offer than just Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn. We’ll see how the river provides rich opportunities to explore nature for those who want to wander its banks.
And Jason Shoultz follows the Mississippi to its mouth to see how the Port of South Louisiana plays a vital role for farmers and ranchers who depend on
the river to get their goods to markets all around the world.
Northern Minnesota
The continent’s largest, longest river helped grow America from a far-flung
network of small farms into a great agricultural superpower. Today, it remains
critical as a link to the food we eat, but its thousands of turns through rich,
rolling fields, cities and villages, levees and bayous, have woven it into an
even deeper place.
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From Soil to Sea
In late June, Iowa farmer Mike Garner’s hard work from last year’s growing
season is paying off. This corn was harvested months ago. But like corn and
soybean farmers across the Heartland, Garner sells his grain when the price is
right.
Mark Twain
Hannibal’s best-known export departed the riverbank here well over a century
ago. The world came to learn of the Mississippi through his tales of steamboats
and two young boys named Tom and Huck.
Too Much of a Good Thing?
Farming along the Mississippi offers unique advantages and challenges, as we
found out a few miles upriver from Hannibal, near the Missouri town of Palmyra.
The River City
About a hundred miles downriver from Hannibal is the city of St. Louis. A crossroads of the Heartland, St. Louis still calls itself the “Gateway to the West.” Mark Twain and millions of his contemporaries came here to strike out in just that direction, but those who stayed built one of the river’s great cities.
The Mississippi River Trail
Three to four hundred miles farther down the Mississippi, we begin to uncover
the soul of “Ol’ Man River.” It’s called the Mississippi Delta, and it’s where
fields of corn and soybeans give way to rice and cotton, crawdads and catfish.
To the Sea in Ships
Close to 280-million tons of goods – including more than half of America’s grain
exports – depart the mouth of the Mississippi on ships and barges each year.
That’s about a ton for every man, woman and child in the U.S. The Heartland’s
harvests head for the world’s dinner tables on the seaways of South
Louisiana.
