Living In The Plains States: Meat And Grain (1974)

[Music] These seven states are the center for food production in the United States, the nation's meat market and bread basket. Five of the plain states are part of the cornbt. Farming's gotten a lot more complicated since I was a boy, we're sure more mechanized now. And those decisions we used to make by experience or the almanac or just feelings in our bones, well, now we make some of them with the help of college professors and computers. Our corn's grown scientifically, too. Farming's gotten to be like every other business. You have to spend money to make money. Equipment and buildings take a big hunk. Sometimes you have to make your own temporary repairs on equipment until you can get a mechanic out to see it. Of course, there's new equipment, too, and that is standardized a lot of things. I can count on most everything being about as regular as the haywe bail. Even with the new fancy machinery, you still need muscles, too. Yes, my hired man. His muscles do a lot of the work on the farm. Of course, farming's always taking muscle power, but now your brain tends to get a heavy workout, too. Even when I'm just driving the tractor, I'm thinking about new hybrids and bug sprays and weed sprays, fertilizers, and conservation, too. This is my oldest son, Edward. He's in college now. It almost takes a college education just to read the bulletins and keep up with everything. My father never even finished grade school. I studied egg through high school and took some college extension courses. [Applause] Even with a college degree, Edward will still do pretty much the same work my father and I did. Farming's farming. You plant, you cultivate, you harvest crops, mostly corn. Now, you feed the livestock, and you hope for the best. Farming in the corn belt of the great plains is highly mechanized. Machines do the work of a thousand hands. Farmers in the wheat belt also depend on a wide variety of machines to do many specialized jobs. So the farm equipment store has become a significant part of the western plains landscape. The farm equipment I have here is quite advanced. I sell many different kinds of implements. They make farming more practical here on the western plains. As you may recall, McCormix Reaper made it possible to harvest huge fields of wheat without the work of so many men. But McCormick's Reaper was tiny compared with the giants we have now that really get the work done good and fast. John Deere's plows made it possible to dig up the sod. The steel plow shares didn't get hung up in deep grassroots like iron and wood did. [Applause] We've come a long way since then, but the basic idea is still the same and still good. If you remember photographs from back in the 30s of dried and cracked land, dead animals, then you know we went through a bad time. Animals and people starved. You see, we learned the hard way that in a region where you don't get much rain, if you don't care for the land, it blows away. We were part of the Dust Bowl. Not a good place for farming back in the 30s. But look at those fields down there now. You can see we learned our lesson. For one thing, we let half a field rest for a year and it stores water. We've tried all kinds of new ways of taking care of the land. All kinds of patterns of discing and plowing that universities and government agencies have experimented with to help us save the soil. Well, we've saved it and the crops are good. We're trying to put some of our profits into other projects. We still remember the 30s. Before machines, a good man could harvest, say, about an acre a day. Now, he can do about a 100. Of course, it means less people on farms. That's what moved me off my dad's place. My brother could handle it without me. And anyway, I like selling machines better. Machines like these made largecale farming possible with fewer men. The jobs they do amaze me sometimes. And talk about luxury. Just look at this one. It has air conditioning, power steering, and automatic transmission. Not to mention the radio and heater like they say in the commercials. This is one of the most mechanized farming areas in the world. The mostly level ground with few irregular features is ideal for this kind of farming. The plain states are in the midst of a machine age. [Music] The plain states are the nation's major supplier of meat. Trucks take livestock from feeder farms to nearby stockyards. Chicago used to be the meat packing center of the country, but the packing houses are now moving closer to where the cattle are raised to stockyards in many plain cities like Sous City and Omaha. [Music] These stockyards are in Witchah, Kansas. And there's a packing house. Livestock is bought in auctions at the stockyards by representatives of the packing houses. At the packing houses, the various kinds of meat are processed. Then the processed meats are prepared for sale. Grain takes a similar trip. It might be collected at a grain elevator. Later it'll be shipped to market and to processing centers with machines playing an important role again. Little more from the elevator. The grain is piped into trains, trucks or boats, whatever form of carrier that will transport it to a processing plant. Railroad lines, highways, rivers, all these transportation systems have focal points in the plain states. Along the rail lines and other routes, large cities and towns have grown up like St. Louis and Omaha. [Music] One allimportant route is the Missouri River, the first highway into the plains. The large cities are marketing, manufacturing, and processing centers for farm products, and many people have left the rural areas to work in the cities. I work on the production line in the cereal packaging plant. I've done work that has something to do with farming just about all my life. I grew up on a farm in Nebraska. Now I know what happens to some of the grain we used to grow. If I ever get tired of this job, there are a lot of other processing plants around here. Maybe I'll try a different kind someday. Many products needed by the farmers of the plain states go through some stages of processing here. Animal feeds, [Music] chemical fertilizers, [Music] lubricants for farm machinery. [Music] and much of the farm machinery itself is made out here in the plain states. [Music] Modern machines and processing methods take the meat and grain from the fields and prepare them for the nation's tables and farm related industry serves farming. Farming on the plains is practical today because of the modern methods of agriculture using machines and scientific conservation techniques. The people and the methods they've developed to farm the land provide meat and grain for the nation. [Music]