America's Heartland - Episode 302

Episode 302
	Our program begins as host Paul Ryan spends time with a Colorado ranching family who’s kept their cattle business strong for many years. Now, most of the newest generation has moved on, and its future is in the hands of one hard-working son and his fiancé. Then, Jason Shoultz heads to his home state of Iowa in time to ride along as a father and son harvest their bountiful corn crop. We find out how Michigan researchers are looking for new ways to develop bio-fuels from all kinds of agricultural products. We visit a Florida widow who’s taken a family tragedy and turned it into a successful farm selling specialty products. And, we meet a family who brought their love of olive oil over from Italy to build a successful business in California.

Rounding up the Future
James Snyder and Carrie Daves are managing 800 head of beef cattle on 600 acres near the La Plata Mountains. Winter days can be frigid and bleak and any notion of a vacation – or even a day off – is out of the question.James and Carrie show how they and their children manage – and explain why they would never do anything else.

Purchase this DVD

Harvest in the Heartland
The ties that bind a farm family together may be a bit stronger than those found in other walks of life. Father and son harvest their part of the vast Iowa corn crop on the state’s endless, rolling landscape. It’s another story about one generation gradually handing off to another, told by the farmers themselves.

Heirloom Harvest
After a tragic accident killed her husband and left her with two young sons, a farm, and a lot of debt, Teena Borek rolled up her sleeves and built a good business growing produce. She’s now an award-winning grower, but she’s had some soul searching to do about getting her children involved.

Green Gold
It’s our energy supply – where it comes from today and where it will come from in the future. It’s no accident that some of the most advanced thinking and experimentation about energy from the farm –biofuels – is happening just a stone’s throw from Detroit among the cornfields of Michigan. It’s a pursuit that dates back to Henry Ford’s heyday.

Liquid Gold
It’s the other oil from agriculture. When humans first discovered that a delicate, tasty, and useful oil could be obtained from olives, a tradition began. Olives don’t grow well in much of the Heartland, but in one sun-baked California valley, a native-born Italian family saw a few struggling olive trees – and possibilities big enough to grow a thriving business.

blog comments powered by Disqus

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.