18 Surprising, Billion-Dollar Food Industries | Business Insider Marathon

France imports a

billion

dollar

s of butter a year, its citizens eat so much that this has caused shortages in Asia. Sales of duri and fruits are booming. China alone spends

billion

s on them every year. We travel the world to see how billion-

dollar

food

industries

work. and meet some of the people who drive them. Our first stop is the Dominican Republic, where the largest aloe vera farm in the world is located. Harvest and squeeze the thorny leaves. The Universal Alo Farm covers 5,000 acres here in the Dominican Republic, while on this farm there are hundreds of types of aloe plants.

I chose aloe barbadensis Miller because it has 20 amino acids, minerals, vitamins, carbohydrates, hormones and other bioactive substances. Once the young plants are in the ground, they take about 8 months to mature. About 750 people harvest these fields. They are sent in groups to the harvest section. section as the cut leaves will not grow back but the plants will grow new ones. It will take them about a week to harvest just this area, one by one the workers collect all the harvested leaves and throw them into a truck where the leaves are headed. a processing plant 2 miles from the highway, the leaves are put through a bath of chlorinated salt water to kill any little field bugs that may be lurking around, then they are trimmed, this wavy fillet is the gel inside the leaf of Which is what is used in real life. aloe vera juice gel or skin care products to make it you need a really good knife they can make it look easy but filling requires precision and they have to move fast stacking 3500 sheets a day many Alo companies use machines to collect the remains of leaves. back to the field as fertilizer and the buckets of fillets that are weighed and then dumped on this big table, the workers here will insectize them for leaf debris which they will then cut up once it's all clean, the fillets head to the crusher which grinds into a pure aloe gel, at this point ascorbic acid is added to extend the shelf life, the gel flows into this spill proof bag, this bag is then vacuum sealed and placed in a larger metal box big.

The entire process from blade to this container takes only about 3 hours, but before the shipment can leave the factory, its contents must be tested to ensure quality. Only when a container passes laboratory testing can it be released for shipment. These are destined for Roddam in the Netherlands, there the gel will be pumped into bottles for Forever Living Products, but not all aloe bottles are made like this. In 2015, consu lab.com tested the ingredients of 10 aloe products, half of They didn't pass our tests. A 2016 Bloomberg investigation found that aloe products from Walmart CVS and Target contain no evidence of aloe.

It is very easy to put out a fake aloe product, which is why there are all kinds of synthetic gels. You will often see the word carbomer as it is a synthetic gel and if you see a clear gel you have no idea if it is really aloe or carbomer. The products are not strictly regulated by the FDA because they are considered supplements or cosmetics, not drugs, so a product may say it contains aloe, but it could mean a variety of things: it really contains Alo filt or it is the whole leaf ground up and not just that internal dirt or is it a synthetic gel and there is actually no aloe that won't hurt you but doesn't have any of the supposed benefits of aloe there isn't much regulation or oversight of aloe products it's also difficult to regulate because aloe It grows naturally throughout America and its gel has been used for thousands of years to heal burns and reduce inflammation.

The challenge is to translate that history into our current rigorous medical examination. Another problem is that there is no clear scientific evidence of the healing powers of Alo. Studies have shown that it helps soothe burns and speed healing. While others show no effect on burns, so it's not that Alo doesn't help; there is no evidence at this time. The outer bark of the leaf has been found to have a laxative compound called Only one study found it caused cancer in rats, while another found it helped with constipation, but the FDA has banned the sale of aloe as an over-the-counter laxative medication. .

There is no patent on aloe, so there isn't much incentive. For companies to invest a lot of money in clinical studies, they don't actually need to do those studies to have these products on the shelves, yet consumers around the world are flocking to aloe as they adopt more natural products. Aloe universal saw a 30% increase in demand. In 2020, as consumers navigate this growing market, how can we identify products made with real aloe vera? Todd says it's actually very complicated, but first he has a few suggestions: You should always check the list of ingredients you want to see.

Aloe you want to see. First, you have to be very careful with the wording because if it just says Leaf, it could be any part of the leaf, you could get latex that you don't want, unless you want a laxative effect. Be careful with complicated words like. 100% gel, that could mean there is 100% gel, but not everything is Alo fillet, so you really need to know what part of the leaf is being made when they say Alo gel is a gel that is made by mixing the entire leaf . Or is it really just pure Alo gel? Despite these uncertainties, experts do not expect Aloe demand to decline anytime soon.

The life of all mushrooms begins here with compost. The mushrooms here are very picky eaters. The fungi eat a strict diet of hay, wheat and recycled mulch. poultry straw and corn cob, so this is the material that is near the end of the composting process, it is dark caramelized, it is soft, it has a lot of water, mushroom spores or seeds are added, then it is aged, It is pasteurized and trucked to farms around the county like this one. I'm Chris and I'm a third generation mushroom farmer. Chris's family has been growing white and crey button mushrooms since 1938.

The mushrooms are grown indoors so we can control the environment. Everything happens on vertical shelves. Workers use this machine to place the Next comes the compost, a layer called casing with Pete Moss limestone and water. This equipment allows us to let the machine do the heavy work. It helps to get a perfect layer of 1 and 3 Quin so that mushrooms do not grow unevenly or make a mess on this panel. controls the growing conditions they want a perfect combination of carbon dioxide, humidity and temperature after 16 days we are ready to harvest but it is the pickers who are the hardest to find we are always harvesting the only day we do not work is Christmas, which did not We stopped due to the pandemic.

Our workers were considered essential now that the economy began to recover. We have lost 20% of our workforce and it has been a significant impact on our

business

. The mushrooms are grown and harvested in three pauses or phases, that is, each one. The room will be harvested three times, starting with the largest mushrooms and then waiting for the smallest ones to mature. Mushrooms double in size every 24 hours, so pickers must move quickly, each arm armed with a knife, a cart, and tons of boxes they harvest. each mushroom by hand, you turn the mushrooms and don't put them in the door 220 mushrooms fill a 10B 10 box in an hour that gives you a good perspective some people make more than 15 16 per hour the F Danielle Beltron and her daughter Sonia run Mazda Farms just down the street.

I am the second Mexican to grow mushrooms in the entire United States. Danielle worked as a mushroom picker for over 12 years and I was thinking in my mind, I say, I hope one day I get a Today, he and Sonia own 25 mushroom houses. We probably need about 80 pickers every day and today we pickers work up to 12 hours a day to collect as many mushrooms as they can, but they still can't keep up. We should be harvesting 10 rooms of mushrooms every day and we can usually only get to seven or eight rooms in the leftover rooms, the mushrooms will be vaporized, which means they will be destroyed.

It's a race against time because mushrooms grow very fast, waiting even a day means and customers don't, so the value decreases by about 35 cents per pound instead of a dollar per pound, it kind of hurts a little thinking seriously, there's nowhere we can probably put this and there's really nothing you can do. even worse for specialty mushrooms that require even more labor, like these shitake at Philips mushroom farms, it usually takes 3 days to collect the whole house, it's still all done by hand so it's still very labor intensive or, my talk, each of these logs have to move them by hand, put them on a rack to spawn, run, then we take them off the rack and bring them here, we put them on this rack to pick them up and then we have to pick them up and then also We have to throw it, there are six touches.

Over the course of the life cycle of this thing, every touch is a person that's hard to find these days, but the labor issues don't just stop at Harvest, they can be felt at the packaging level as well. Megan is the third in her family to direct Mother. Organic Terrestrial Mushrooms, this mushroom mascot was just brought in from our farms and then we put it in one of our two refrigerators. Everything is labeled so we know exactly which farm it comes from, the date it arrived, and how many pounds it comes with. and everything is in our system so we can easily track all our products.

Megan has machines to wash and cut the mushrooms and even to wrap and label the boxes, but everything else, from filling a box to tracking and weighing, is done by hand. and then they will put it on a floor at the end and palpate it to deliver it to the customer. Mother Earth delivers mushrooms as far as Denver, Texas, and Boston, but getting them there is difficult with so few workers, so it used to be just the harvesters that were hardest to get now are at our harvest level, at our supervisor level, at our level of quality control, even truckers at the level of our office staff have also been very difficult to find, the problem is that if they can't harvest them at The Granjas, that means we don't have the mushrooms for the packaging facilities, It's a complete domino effect, so how did the industry's labor problem become so bad?

It begins with the immigration history of Kennet Square. The Quakers, a Protestant Christian group, were the first to grow mushrooms here. In 1885, as the story goes, originally a Quaker farmer who grew carnations attempted to grow mushrooms under his carnation beds and was successful. The Quakers then hired Italian immigrants to do the hard manual labor. The Italians then started hundreds of mushroom farms of their own. In the area between the 1950s and 1970s, former sugar cane workers from Puerto Rico settled in Kennet Square and took over mushroom picking, but when they began demanding higher wages and better working conditions, the owners of farms laid them off and hired Mexican immigrants in 1986.

President Ronald Reagan signed an immigration bill that gave legal status to certain undocumented farm workers who came to the country before 1982 and really helps all Mexican workers. Most Mexicans work in the Maron industry for, I would say, at least 40 years they built. Kennet Square in the mushroom capital of the United States now produces 60% of the country's product, but that population of Mexican immigrants is aging and their children have chosen other professional careers. We started receiving people from Central America now, even before the pandemic, these new workers. It started to go to other

industries

, there are people who say, oh, if you go into construction or you go into landscaping, you make more money to make things worse.

Strict immigration laws in the US have affected the legal flow of Central American and Latin American workers because mushrooms are a year-round crop the industry does not qualify for the h2a temporary worker program that allows immigrants to come to the US and working in seasonal agriculture labor shortages are affecting all mushroom farms, both small and large, to attract the few remaining pickers. Farm owners are offering benefits higher wage housing and transportation to and from work our pickers work at a peace rate we pay them by the box my average picker makes over $14 an hour but I have some pickers that make over $20 an hour I would like to pay them more The company still cannot afford to engage in agriculture in general and mushroom farms specifically work on very thin margins, so when we cannot harvest 10% of our product, we are definitely losing money .

Chris is losing $4,000 in income per week this year. we probably lost about $250,000 is millions of dollars yes there are not thousands it is realistic millions it is painful if this happens Farms will have to scale down and fill fewer grow rooms or eventually they will have to close In total, Chester County mushroom farmers lost $168 million in 2020 and that has a significant effect on the market, whose popularity is booming for the last 10 years. We are seeing a 3-5% increase in demand each year as grocery store sales decline. increased by 15% in 2021, customers ask every day to fill their orders and we just don't have enough mushrooms to do it, so it's hard to want to expand, want to provide all the orders they want and then see mushrooms, just go to waste The solution to the labor problem is not easy Farmers have already automated much of the process, some have resorted to growing larger mushrooms, if you grow a larger mushroom it actually makes it much faster for the pickers pick them up so we can get them here faster and get them to our customers and do it with less labor the American Mushroom Institute is pushing the Senate to pass the farm workforce modernization act the bill would extend the worker program temporary h2a to the mushroom industry that way immigrants could get a farm worker visa to pick mushrooms we need more migrant workers we need more capacity to bring people into the country just like our grandparents did, they came up and worked two jobs and They worked hard to make a better life for us and we need to continue making America do that with new immigrant populations.

Others in the industry are considering picking robots, although not everyone believes they are the best option. You really can't get a machine to be as delicate as a person's hand to choose exactly which mushroom they want. You also have to keep an eye to see which one is ready to collect robots like this. There are still 3 years left for farmers to continue making calls for anyone to come help collect mushrooms. Then we head to Thailand, where farmers harvest a million. metric tons of the world's most expensive durian fruit each year, the durian is native to several tropical climates around the world, including Thailand.

Thailand alone grows more than 300 varieties, but the most expensive durians are grown in Nury province, they are known as non-durian, they do not constitute the highest grade of durian in Thailand and are often given as a sign of respect, but even Among those that are not durian, two varieties stand out: the Kano durian, more expensive, and the Monong durian, a little more affordable. Durian is not described as having a refined and sweet pulp with a mild fragrance. and creamy texture, while other lower grade durians are said to have a stronger odor and watery texture, durian has a distinctive taste and smell for two main reasons: B's environment and the cultivation practices of its farmers. .

The Nanab Burri province has been a center for durian cultivation in Thailand for over 300 years. Farmers in this region have been perfecting their technique for generations using their resources and skills to grow durians of the highest quality possible. One of the resources they depend on is the Chiao Freya River, which flows through N Theb and fertilizes the soil, but the water from the river is not used to water the Duan trees. NB farmers prefer to buy fresh water as they believe it improves the final quality of the durian as after planting it takes about 6 years for a healthy durian tree to bear fruit.

Once the trees begin to flower, farmers count the days until the fruits are ripe, depending on the breed this can last from 90 to 150 days, but it is not just time and labor that makes If durian is not so expensive, the cost of providing this type of care adds up. Water alone costs about $2200 per year. Farmers have to constantly check the trees and look for infections or insects and wrap each durian in plastic to protect it. They must harvest the durian one by one when each fruit is perfectly ripe. This requires a lot of time and work.

Intensive techniques have a great impact on the flavor and final value of non-durian. A 2 and 1 12kg durian monong from Aida Farm can cost over $100, or about a third of Cano's price, making it a more popular and affordable option for Cano customers. On the other hand, it is the most expensive non-durian you can buy depending on its size. AA Farm's Cano durian can range from $380 to $530 per fruit, but despite Cano's high price, demand for this variety is growing and supply cannot keep pace. One of the main challenges is the climate crisis because the tropical climate required to grow durian also makes farms susceptible to floods, storms and other extreme weather.

In 1995 and 2011 floods destroyed almost all durian trees in northern birie. In 2011 around 1100 acres of durian trees were razed and only 17 acres survived after this mill had to start the six-year process. The global durian market is expected to reach more than $28 billion by 2025 and that means aana and other farms around the world will likely continue to be sold. Larry is a fifth generation farmer in Fort Me Florida, we have been growing citrus in my family since the 1850's when I started in the industry. Citrus trees occupied more than 900,000 acres in the state of Florida, in fact, some years there was too much fruit and market prices were depressed just 15 years ago his family packed a million boxes of oranges a year, mainly Valencia oranges, the type big, sweet and juicy.

You planted a grove expecting it to last for several generations. The first case of citrus detection was reported in China in 1919 and quickly spread throughout the continent, devastating citrus plantations in India and Saudi Arabia. No one knows exactly how Asian citrus CID got to Florida, but in 1998 it appeared on an orange jasmine plant in a backyard in Palm Beach. County and spread quickly throughout the state via infected roots, but it would be another 7 years before the Florida orange tree showed signs of greening. It spreads throughout the state before you know it is present and in 2005, Larry found his first infected tree.

It was a real challenge and an eye-opener. We knew the threat it could pose to our operation and were afraid that there were more infected trees that simply had not been detected at the beginning. Larry tried to remove all the diseased trees, but the insect soon moved faster. infecting too many to control when a CID chews up a citrus tree it leaves behind the bacteria that cause greening here in the vascular tissue the bacteria replicate and block this important highway for moving nutrients underground the root systems thin and die in the surface you will notice the yellow pattern the dark green spots if you can see me through the canopy of this tree, that means that this tree is actually very sick, while the trees continue to produce oranges for a few years, the fruit essentially never ripens, you see it is small in size, it stays green and when I cut this fruit you see a strange shape, you can still eat the fruit, just not as sweet, the orange juice of this fruit has lower sugar or brick content than normal fruit , but there is nothing wrong with the juice, it is horrible and 40%.

Of those oranges falling off the tree earlier than usual, the bacteria is actually starving and kills the tree over time. Today, researchers estimate that 90% of all orange trees in the state have the bacteria. There are no longer abundant citrus trees in the landscape Larry has maintained. His trees are alive and producing for 15 years using a combination of horticultural techniques developed by scientists at the University of Florida. Part of our work going on right now is finding ways for trees that have the disease to continue producing fruit that is usable. you guys want to see what some sad ones look like, yeah, okay, so they're really small, oh, there's a leak, they're actually small, they jump a little bit, so we use this thing called vacuum cleaner or the funnier term.

What we use with children is after we simply suck them. It's basically a little vacuum cleaner in my hand. Cids, has discovered some things that detract from SIDS first, this pink clay is sprayed on trees to hide the leaves from the insect that uses wavelengths of light to see a study showed that the clay was more effective than insecticides, the Second thing Lauren is researching are these 8 foot wide sheets of plastic called reflective mulch. The idea is that it should reach where the Sid cannot find the host plant. It could be that it blinds them or causes a visual deterrent.

How does it work? Somehow, we have SIDS. but we got them at a reduced price a few years ago. Farmers found that placing plastic bags around young trees could help them get stronger before infection. Lauren is now studying how effective these individual protective covers or ipcs can be, so this is the IPC mesh. and as you can see, it has little holes, you can see my hand very clearly, the wind, the sun, the rain, everything passes through here. The goal is really to keep that Asian citrus CID off the tree and then if you look underneath, this is our watering, the baby.

The trees will grow in the ipcs for 2 years, so you can see that the trees are not perfect. We'll still have some things on them. We have some pest problems here, but you know they look pretty good compared to what's in the. open field and this will actually give our trees a fighting chance once they are in the environment and could become infected by Cass' scientific journey. T vashish believes the key is in the soil. We have been learning that trees need these nutrients. To combat the infection, citrus trees due to this disease have very small roots or fewer roots, so they are not very efficient at collecting nutrients.

It's as if a job for 10 people was done by one person. Same with roots, she found that giving smaller doses of fertilizer and water more frequently helps diseased roots absorb nutrients better and is similar to us, six small meals a day instead of three large meals, is better. The same goes for fertilizer and irrigation, smaller doses are better than large doses, Larry. uses fertilizers tailored to the trees. She is also planning more saplings. One of our strategies for dealing with greening is to plant The Groves at higher densities. We are planting 300 trees per acre compared to 140 to 150 trees per acre before we did it. deal with the disease, so if you know that all the trees will be infected and more will be planted, hopefully some growers will survive they have also tried releasing predatory wasps and spraying insecticides, while there is no silver bullet in combination, these short-term solutions have worked, it can be slowed down.

We have been fighting citrus greening for 15 years and while the industry is not thriving, we are definitely surviving, but the problem is that all of these approaches add an extra $600 per acre to production costs for growers, our income. have been reduced by more. of half in terms of individual growth Growers are losing money and many were unable to take the losses by early 2022, half of Florida's orange growers had left the industry, so while waiting for a long-term solution , Larry is struggling to continue harvesting. Likewise, his family always has workers who quickly pick the oranges and put them in bags once they have a good batch.

The collectors throw them in baskets in the Grove. Workers then transport the oranges to the packing facility just down the street. We have eight digital cameras. that takes a photo of each piece of fruit as it travels through the packaging line we use an electronic sorter to divide the crop by color if they are orange enough the fruit is cleaned and hit with a layer of natural wax preserves the fruit uh Extends its useful life today thanks to the HLB. Larry packs half as many boxes as he did 17 years ago if the oranges are too green.

Larry knows they will be difficult to sell on the fresh side, so he sends them to be squeezed at the supermarket. Florida Natural Plant in Lake Wales Larry owns the juice plant along with other local producers as part of the company's cooperative. About 90% of the fruit grown at Steak goes into orange juice, but like the producers, the factory has been getting fewer oranges, sothat there is less efficiency. In the plant with the smallest volume of fruit, the factory had to close one of its three processing lines. Today, 60,000 boxes of oranges arrive at the plant from Cooperative Farms in central Florida, that is, about 30,000 fewer than before from hlb in the 24 hours after the we juice is harvested. the fruit, this machine squeezes the juice from each orange, we take out the seeds and also collect the pulp, where we can add it back to the degree we want, so that the juice is pasteurized and then pumped into cardboard boxes, but remember that the Greening affects the orange. natural sugar content, so Florida's natural has to mix infected oranges with sweeter oranges from different regions or even Seasons, it still tastes like orange juice, it's just not as sweet today, the factory produces about a third less than question Greening, they need a home for their fruit where they can get maximum value that will hopefully sustain their operations until a solution to greening is found.

Many scientists believe that the long-term solution lies in re-engineering nature, either genetically changing the insect itself or breeding citrus trees naturally, ultimately a tree that is resilient. or tolerant to the disease will be key, that is the project that Fred Gitter and his team are working on at the University of Florida, they are trying to obtain an orange variety resistant to HLB, which means that even if the disease appears, the tree will not get sick. To do that, you take two different types of trees, maybe one with delicious oranges and another that is hardy and essentially has the match and hopefully your child will still taste good but won't get HLB.

That's really the Holy Grail of citrus screening research, but that's not easy. Finding a hardy orange is like searching for a genetic needle in a haystack. It is extremely difficult to grow new oranges. We know of some types of trees related to oranges that are resistant and we are trying to access the genetics of those resistant types. when making crosses Fred says it could take more than a decade so it is long term there is always an element of chance in this but armed with that Miracle resistant tree they could be better prepared to face future diseases it is an interconnected global world in which We live as people and plant diseases move quite freely, so there will be another problem, another disease will appear.

I believe science will continue to provide new tools that will make citrus growing easier over time. I look forward to those days. I'm sure we will have other challenges. We will face that over time, but today Citrus Greening is here to stay. Fran's family has been making cheese in the town of Zutu Valde for over 150 years. Every day begins by heating more than 600 gallons of milk pumped from the milking barn. Now it's like 37° inre, just the body temperature of a cow. For each batch of cheese, she adds renit enzymes that cause the milk proteins to clump together into solid curds leaving the liquid form behind.

Ren is like a pair of scissors cutting. through the milk after 30 minutes a giant curd has formed that should break so it's good this machine starts cutting it into pieces and we cut it very small to have very little moisture in the cheese to be able to make a cheese that can AG For years Frank's parents taught him how to make cheese when he was 22, my brother and I had a 7 generation ctin making cheese and milking cows and, well, there will be at least seven generations of cows walking around on this farm and he took over of the family.

business

with his brother in January 2022 I think 50% of Dutch people have a great-grandfather who was a farmer Farmers shaped the landscape of the Netherlands in the 13th century, almost a fifth of what is now the Netherlands was under water over the For centuries, the Dutch built dikes to hold back the sea.

Farmers drained large portions of the reclaimed land to plant crops, but one of the only things that would grow in the wet soil was grass, so raising livestock for meat, milk and cheese became big business, the industry dairy. eventually became a symbol of the Netherlands, as much as tulips and windmills, milk and cows Grace Vermier's Dutch masterpieces in Ben go. In the 20th century, the Netherlands produced so much cheese that it was a valuable export. Today, almost all Dutch dairy farms sell their milk to large factories that pasteurize it and use machines to make cheese on a large scale, but Fran only works with raw milk, only 4% of Dutch dairy farms make Howa at home like him, we still produce it on the road like my great-grandfather and I did.

I don't know if it's very good, but I like it and what the machines do in the factories, he still prefers to do it by hand, like checking the consistency of the curd himself, it's very warm now, it's like almost 30° and the curd it is real. soft from time to time all the curd here is like this deep in the road and over there there is no more curd, but I'm just checking if the curd is a little bit evenly divided, equally spread, it can start to drain a little of that liquid way but nothing is wasted he skims the fat to make butter and feeds it to his pigs the pigs are already happy with just the weight and I like butter on my sandwich in the morning cuts the leftover curd into sections large enough to A wheel of cheese measures the correct amount by touch while Fran's employee, Savan, prepares the old cubes, most of which were Fran's grandparents.

There are only a handful of farmers in the Netherlands who still use wooden buckets. Fran places a cloth under the surface and piles on the curds. On top of that, the cloth will help the last piece to drain, they repeat the process for 12 wheels of cheese, uh, there is a lot of weight, so I think between 25 and 30 kg, something like that, and it's great, these presses squeeze out all the remaining liquid. This cheese comes from the milk of Frank's 200 female cows. The Netherlands has almost 1.6 million of them and they produce a lot of nitrogen because they eat fertilizer, grass grown in the summer and imported grains and soybeans all year round.

Your urine is also full of nitrogen. and when mixed with their excrement, it creates a gas called ammonia. The ammonia columns fall on natural reserves and acidify the soil. Some nitrogen-loving plants, like grass, take over while other native plants cannot absorb adequate nutrients from there. It's a domino effect. many native plants weaken or die snails cannot get enough nutrients to build their shells birds that eat snails cannot develop eggs where their chicks are born with brittle bones within one of the largest national parks in the Netherlands Rangers such as anamik fer let's say the oaks and the pines are dying out, they are all diseased, there is none that I would say, oh, you know, that is very, very fit or that is a very healthy tree, you can say that the trees are dying out.

They are starving, they are not getting all the nutrients they need. needs to be a very healthy, fully growing oak tree that can be Environmentalists say 14 habitats in the country are on the brink of collapse The dairy sector is one of the drivers of biodiversity loss in the Netherlands in 1992, which is now en The European Union adopted a law known as the Habitats Directive that requires countries to designate natural areas for conservation in order to comply with it. The Netherlands introduced policies to reduce nitrogen on these protected lands back then. Dutch farms had one of the highest ammonia emission rates in Europe in 2019, the industry had reduced its emissions by almost 2/3 Covered manure storage, such as under this slatted floor, has helped if it remains sealed under soil for long enough, the ammonia will not evaporate as much.

Everywhere we were, there is a 2m deep basement filled with manure and PE, but these efforts alone were not enough. The farms that released the most ammonia were located near the protected nature reserves the most court. The country's top official said the Netherlands needed to do more the government was quick to comply some lawmakers suggested halving the number of animals in the country farmers were outraged They protested for weeks by dumping manure in the streets and blocking roads with tractors. In early 2023, the government lowered the target to a 50% cut, but by then a broader political party called the Citizen Farmer Movement had swept the provincial election.

Rick Lutters is a party leader. In this area we have a nitrogen law that is rigid and entirely focused on dairy production and we want this law gone shortly after the government announced a $1.6 billion plan to buy up and close up to 3,000 high-emission farms. near. nature reserves, a farmer can voluntarily buy out and possibly get more than his farm is worth, but for Fran selling her seven-generation farm is not an option, she says her cows are like family, this is Gina, she has the highest rank and is the leader. of the land, she just keeps other C CS heads away from her mostly, so when she wants to drink and there's another cow, Bo, step aside.

I'm Gina, here I am and I want to drink. She even got married on this farm surrounded by her cows and it's tradition in her family to name the cows after relatives and uh, I also named the cow after my daughter. Frank and his brother milk the cows twice a day first, we clean the teeth and start starting with the left front, right front, front, right, back and left. back and then we connect the milking claw, there is a little vacuum underneath so that the milk comes out. Fran gets about 8 gallons of milk a day from each cow, which she can milk in 15 minutes and would have taken her grandfather an entire day.

Technology helped dairy and livestock farms consolidate from the mid-20th century onwards. The small farmers, t-shirt manufacturers, abandoned and the largest ones grow to this day, between 70 and 80% of the country's dairy products are sent abroad, mainly to other European countries, that's all. in the region between, say, London, Paris and Berlin, within a 500-mile area in the US, it would be called a local product. The Netherlands is also the EU's largest meat exporter; They market pork, beef and poultry worth about $9 billion. internationally every year and does it all on land not much larger than the US state of Maryland.

For much of the world, the Netherlands became a roadmap for how to farm efficiently at scale, but environmentalists like Natasha Orlans of the World Wildlife Fund see it differently. I see the Netherlands as an example of where everything went wrong: exporting meat and dairy and having a huge amount of manure here in the Netherlands, which causes all these environmental and social problems. The farmers we spoke to said saving the environment should go hand in hand with preservation. its centuries-old traditions Traditions like turning the cheese in the first 24 hours of the cheese, we turn it six times, turning it ensures that both sides of the wheel will be round like the curve of the cube, I can already see it turning yellow, so that is a good sign. then move the cheese wheels into a salty brine the salt bath is mainly to make a crust around the cheese a little salt the salt will penetrate deeper into the cheese to give it some flavor Fran ages his Hela specialty for up to 10 years at a constant temperature of 59°F, this is one from 2013 so it's now 10 years old and it still looks shiny and it still looks young here it stores hundreds of Wheels worth over $100,000 worth of cheese every day, them We turn them over and put an additional layer of coating on top.

Beyond that, the liquid plastic coating seals out moisture and, of course, to keep mold away. You hear it when I pick it up, it gets stuck in the case, so you turn it over and it gets old. Friendly bacteria accumulate. to amino acids these crystals that's where the cheese flavor comes from Fran can tell it's aging well by The Sound it's nice flat here you hear it Fran is one of the more than 45,000 people working in the Dutch dairy industry if you just take away half the farmers and half the jobs and half the income, where are these people going to work?

They will probably go to the cities and all the towns in the countryside will become ghost towns. I think in 10 or 15 years, I'm worried. Who will produce our

food

and where it comes from? Many farmers now face a difficult decision whether to buy, thin their herds, move their farms or make costly improvements to try to reduce nitrogen emissions, but not everyone can afford it.costly innovations where many farmers are working on tight margins or are already in debt. Farmers don't get a loan from the bank because they say, oh, we don't know if you can still grow crops after this registration because of these regulations, plus farmers don't even know yet if there are innovations.

It could actually save your farm from closure. Researchers at Vingan University hope to do just that. This is not a commercial dairy farm. It is a research center. Keys D coning runs the University's dairy campus. Her team is testing different iterations of the slatted floor. Fran has we can. We perform tests in which we separate urine and solids. They are also studying the effect of robotic scrapers and poop vacuums on quickly moving waste to closed storage vacuums to reduce methane and ammonia loss, but Keys estimates one like this could cost more than $20,000 and a farm of 120 cows would need two.

She says changing the cows' diet is a cheaper option. So can we feed cows in such a way that we have less ammonia emissions or less nitrogen losses? Her team feeds the cows different combinations of feeds and then uses these feeders to test the quantity. animals eat and their emissions, the electronic identification system is identified so we know exactly which cow is in the box, so if Innovations cannot help farmers still have the option to purchase, in November 2023, almost 1,000 livestock The farms had registered for almost a quarter were dairy farms, but the government will not pay them for a time that will take at least another 6 months to a year before it is finalized that same month, a new right-wing party PVV won the greatest number of seats. in the country's parliamentary elections it mattered to Fiers, the party leader spoke at the farmers protests earlier in the year, our farmers were killed by some leftist liberal idiot.

The solar nitrogen problem in the Netherlands, the party has signaled that it wants to stop government spending on initiatives to reduce nitrogen, including the fund for the purchase plan Rick hopes that the pbv will form a coalition with other pro-farer parties we can Making new laws is simple enough but a coalition could take months The World Wildlife Fund says this delay will only lead to further deterioration of nature meanwhile farmers are in limbo, it is the limbo that paralyzes the agricultural sector and that limbo is also very dangerous for nature because it is still suffering, it is horrible and I can feel for them that this problem is not unique to the Netherlands.

Dairy farmers in Ireland may have to reduce the size of their herds due to dangerous levels of nitrogen in rivers, which are causing algae blooms. New Zealand has some of the most polluted waterways in the world. Dairy farming is one of the largest sources of these dangerous levels of nitrate in drinking water and in the US state of California, agriculture has contributed to dangerous air pollution. All of these countries will have to face the same questions that the Netherlands faces today. How do we feed ourselves? We preserve tradition. We keep economies running and protect our planet.

I don't see myself as such. I am opposed to farmers. I oppose the system as it is now. It is ecologically a disaster and also does not provide farmers with an adequate income. Basically, it is a system that is broken and that system needs to be fixed. Bron also seems open to a solution. If you help nature or the climate create it, maybe then your family can continue making cheese for another seven generations. I hope that dairy farmers have a future in the Netherlands. I think we are really connected to the landscape. I hope the farms win.

It does not grow too large to be managed on a family scale. I think it's a beautiful way of life. You probably know the Cavendish banana. You can find this type of banana in all supermarkets in the world. They are very popular because they are delicious, they look pretty and ripen as they are transported, they are quite productive, they have a fairly thick skin so they travel well and taste quite good, they come in their own package but there is a problem, they are sterile, they have no seeds. Seedless means Cavendish bananas are clones of each other, so the only way to propagate them is in vitro or by taking new growths called suckers from the base of an older plant, but as they are all genetic copies, Cavendish are really vulnerable to diseases, the domino effect if you have everything. bad with a single clone a disease can kill everything plant by plant that is exactly what is happening with TR4 one of the deadliest plant diseases that exist the fungus does not spread to humans but it eventually kills the banana plant so which scientists believe no longer grows fruit The fungus probably started somewhere in Southeast Asia in the 1990s and spread rapidly around the world;

Then, in 2019, it arrived in Latin America combined with the Caribbean. 75% of the world's bananas are grown in that area to ensure that the fungus does not spread. Farms throughout Colombia have implemented biosecurity measures. Evanor 2 was one of the first farms in the country to detect TR4. Workers wash and disinfect the underside of any car that enters in case there is infected dirt hidden in the tracks. Antonio's team built a cement path throughout the farm so that, on their way to harvest, workers will not walk on open ground once they have reached the area ready to be harvested.

Workers walk through a disinfectant footbath made from ammonium in the field Workers measure banana toes to make sure they are ready for harvest. They are usually ready 12 to 13 weeks after the fruit stem appears. A worker cuts a 65-pound weight. bundle while the other catches it and takes it to the cable car that W cable system takes all those bunches of bananas to the packing plant first the workers disinfect the bunches with chlorine then they check the quality of the bananas and any sign of damage they cut them off and dump bushels into a huge tank. The bath not only preserves the bananas but also removes the latex that is naturally found in the peel.

The bananas are then cut into smaller bunches of five to seven. Come. Those famous workers with stickers wrap the banana carefully so that there is no bruise in that the wrapping has holes so that the bananas can ripen, as they travel no more than 4 hours after the bananas are harvested. Those boxes end up on pallets loaded onto trucks. The bananas are transported by trucks to the nearby port where they are transferred to ships. This shipment is headed to the US with equipment, bananas and people moving along this global supply chain. It's easy to see how the fungus could spread if TR4 sneaks onto a farm.

The Colombian government has established strict guidelines to contain the fungus Fus, which means that symptoms such as yellowing of the leaves were found, once level 4 is identified in a plant, you cannot simply kill that plant, the fungus It penetrates about 10 feet deep into the soil, once the pathogen is in the soil it is almost impossible to eradicate, so you have to kill all the plants in that area to continue operating the rest of the farm. Evan North 2 followed the government's three-zone plan. The injected herbicide kills all the plants in zone A, which is covered with tarps so that birds do not get close to the fungus and spread it, there are also channels around the zone to keep water away from the infected area in zone B called zone buffering, finally in zone C the plants are allowed to grow, but are constantly monitored for signs of TR4.

José estimates that biosecurity has cost This farm has amounted to $5 million since 2019, so they are expensive, but the measures are working to keep the fungus at bay. These biosecurity measures have contained the fungus in Colombia and prevented it from spreading to Ecuador, the largest exporter of bananas in the world. The fungus can destroy a whole variety of fruit if it is not stopped, we know this because it has happened before. In the early 1900s, a banana called Gross Michelle was the most popular, but in the 1950s, a strain of Panama disease wiped out all Gross Mell production, fortunately.

Cavendish resisted that first train, so he took over as the preferred banana. The problem was that banana companies built their entire supply chains around this Cavendish variety. In 2019 they exported 20 million bananas and supported millions of jobs around the world, but now Cavendish is too. vulnerable history repeats itself now with the tropical race and the cavies that cook bananas like bananas are also at risk by TR4 a risk for food security because bananas are a staple food in Latin America in Africa and in many other countries they are part of our day by day diet, so yes, the newest breed of ferium is scary for both Cavendish and bananas, but this time we have advanced scientific researchers from around the world who are working towards one goal: this guy actually invented a banana that did just that In 2019, Dr.

James Dale announced that his team had successfully injected the DNA of a hardy banana into a fire dish and it worked. We found the solution. We have a line from Cavendish that appears to be completely resistant to TR4. What we haven't done yet is a taste test and that's it. because they look GMO, they smell and feel exactly the same as any other banana, we only changed one heh, but no one would buy your Miracle banana because it was genetically modified in the EU, most member countries have totally or partially banned GMOs in The US is allowed, but there are fears that one argument against GMOs is that these modified plants would quickly spread their genes and wipe out biodiversity, but with bananas that is not a problem, the genes do not move because they are sterile .

You can grow a GMO banana next to a non-GMO banana. -GMO banana for 50 years and the gene will not pass from one to the other incredibly frustrating, there is a solution but it is a scientific solution but not a political solution so the scientists had to go back to the drawing board using what they learned from James to play the non-GMO game Fernando is a breeder for Keene, a genetics company in the Netherlands, and believes that the best way to circumvent GMO regulations is through traditional breeding, which means taking two different types of bananas, the Cavendish and one that is resistant, and essentially they have the couple and their child is hopefully resistant to Panama disease, but still tastes good like the Cav dish.

Crossbreeding or traditional breeding is something that happens every day in nature, so bees pollinate different flowers with other flowers, so that's what we're doing here. We are acting like bees Fernando has found a few resistant bananas to cross with a Cavendish but most of them are not even edible bananas, they are the bananas that are full of seeds like these and AC crossing those with a Cavendish is difficult, they are sterile, very difficult. Breathing is not impossible. , so you can try to cross, but you have to do it many, many times to get just a few seats so James can make that first GMO banana.

It took almost 10 years from our first field TR for those future bananas. that are traditionally grown will take as long as many years because the banana life cycle is quite slow, but the longer it takes to traditionally produce a resistant Cavendish, the more the disease spreads and the more ferium strains could be released Fernando says there are bigger picture your way of attacking this problem diversity take tomatoes, for example, you go to the supermarket and there are maybe 10 or more different types of tomatoes Cherry Vine meat Roma that's diversity, so if one tomato gets in trouble, it wins It won't be a big loss Fernando and his colleagues have the same vision for bananas: we have red bananas, pink bananas, why not try to incorporate them into the market so that you can go to the supermarket and have a whole bank of different banana options that you can To choose from, there are hundreds of different varieties of bananas around the world.

A friend of mine picked one up in Pap Guinea and said if you don't know it, you think you're eating a strawberry. Yes, there would also be

surprising

ly different flavors and diversity. It helps the farms, but if you have different types of bananas grown together, one banana will probably be more resistant than the next, so that the spread of the disease to the next plant can be stopped. So why haven't companies diversified because it's too expensive and complicated? change a 25 billion dollar industry built around a monoculture, so until it is founda solution, these biosecurity measures will have to be the short-term solution to keep the big banana business alive, getting the dough started off-site to make a metric ton of vanam butter. fill this churn with 2,400 L of cream as the churn rotates, the fat collides and sticks forming butter grains after 30 minutes of spinning, the churn is opened and inspected, then cleans the butter grains with the filter buttermilk and the churn is allowed to run for another 15 to 30 minutes until all the grains become a single quantity of butter before the dough can be needed.

Let it sit for a couple of days so that it acquires flavor in the butter house. 50kg blocks of butter are unwrapped and cut into slices. smaller pieces, the butter is needed with a wooden rolling pin on a rotating table using a 19th century technique known as malax, this removes excess buttermilk and creates a smooth, silky texture. It was introduced into the process by Meson Bers founder Janif B, yes, in larger workshops, centrifuges. They are usually used to remove remaining whey, but here it is done completely by hand. This process requires so much skill that B requires people to apprentice for a year;

The final step is to add fine salt. During this process, the butter will lose a liter or two. of water when the butter has reached the correct level of flexibility, it is shaped into a block, cut and the color checked, when the butter reaches the ideal consistency it is ready to be shaped. The necessary butter is placed in this machine called The Pusher. The Pusher squeezes the butter through a cylinder and onto a table where it is cut with a guitar string cutter called Mar Antoanet. The cut butter is molded with titanium paddles by a team that works up to 5 tons of butter per day another firm B is a hallmark that Bourier makes use of about 13 different butter recipes throughout the year, some of the most popular flavors that Bourier makes are Seaweed Butter, Smoked Salt Butter, Vanilla Butter, and Peanut Butter. pepper espet, but true to form, each of these butters can be adapted slightly depending on the request.

He's also been busy creating new ones. Recipes like this SP Infused Butter Behind this passion is the previous owner, Janiv, who retired a few years ago and while he may no longer work at the store, his philosophy of making a top-notch product remains a tenant. powerful and, at the end of the day. It is the pleasure that customers feel when purchasing the dough that motivates Bourier to continue. Our next stop is Spain, where the most expensive ham in the world is produced. Aarian black pigs are descended from wild boes and have been considered a delicacy since long before our time in the year 77 Roman right plan The Elder attributed their superior quality to their superior quality in 1493, when he crossed the Atlantic for the second time.

Christopher Columbus took Iberian pigs on board this Caravel. The most expensive of all sells for €4,100, more than $4,500, but despite the high price, this ham is still a local product. Favorite black Iberian pigs can be found in the southern and western regions of the Iberian Peninsula, which comprises Spain and Portugal. In Spain, production is limited to the provinces of Salanka, Huela, Córdova, Caseres and Bados. Portugal also produces it under the name Presunto IO. Spanish Iberham. Protected by the use of protected designation of origin, the five Spanish provinces where it is produced are divided into four different protected origin destinations.

Of Iberham's total production, only 6% comes with a black label indicating that it is 100% purebred Iberian. baron the pigs are raised in an ecosystem known as DEA the pigs live in the wild roaming freely in the DEA according to regulations there should be no more than two pigs per hectare of grassland the deesa is rich in olives, nuts and berries, but especially in acorns called boots in Spanish that are rich in nutrients and fatty acids basically a super food for pigs, so after learning all about the black Iberian pig and why it is such a special pig and different from any breed, we found ourselves in a company local here in Corana Lazo.

To know the process of making hams, the ham comes from the back leg of the pig, most companies also cure the front leg called shoulder and use the rest of the meat for other products such as chizo lazo. It stores more than 150,000 legs in its warehouses. of the hands that are made here come from an even older breed of aarian pig, the habo herd, which has black spots on the skin and is only found in the mountains of wva. the pigs are killed when they are 15 months old, the hams and then, The pallets are buried in salt for 15 to 20 days, depending on the weight, after salting the process begins to gradually slow down.

The legs spend about two months in a temperature-controlled room, then are moved to a new room for six to 9 months. curing stage and also the longest is that of the sellers, on average anarán ham needs a couple of years to reach its Pak flavor, but some legs can be cured for much longer to better understand how Iberian ham is labeled in the market we visited. deerra products a store in Seville that sources local products from andalia and no more than 250 km to know if it is a good H it has to be soft and the fat must melt with a little temperature, so it is a Well, because of its origin and environment, aanam is carved using a specific technique that can take a long time to learn, so this is our homeo, this is 100% Iberico, which is the highest grade, it is cut in such a divine shape.

I've never seen an H cut like this. You know, you're used to those very long cuts, just a little sad. This one looks kind of Royal and the room smells really good it smells really good and actually before I try it I just want to point out. look how brilliant this place is so good so good I have no words my voice is gone it's so good it's not salty but that's what surprises me every time I eat ham or good quality meat in general that doesn't taste like salt Even though it is a main stage of production, of course, it is just nice and tasty.

The flavor is not like you can taste corn here. It really goes back to the actual pig that made this, it's really nice and especially the fat. I should keep it, it's very nice and fatty, it adds a little more battery texture and the marbling too because these pigs are smaller than usual and have more muscle in their legs instead of fat, it's very very tender and really has a different taste compared to other hams in Switzerland, we see how they produce authentic swiss cheese, one of the five most consumed cheeses in the USA. In fact, I am in the town of aalton in emal, which is in a region to the east from Burn 80. % of all emala production comes from this region with 150 producers and its name comes from here there is a river nearby em and such which means valley in German in the US it is known as swiss cheese emala It has iconic holes and is also the largest cheese in the world. emala aop can only be produced in these regions in Switzerland.

The EU granted AOP protection in 2002, meaning these areas are the protected designation of origin, but there are some qualifications for this. Milk must come from dairy farms located no less than 20 km away and must be produced with raw milk. 177,000 700 tons of emala are produced every year in this region by 150 family cheese factories. Cheese production began in this area more than 200 years ago. It is a mountainous region very good for cattle grazing the emala shal quazer Da show was opened in 1989 the cheese process starts at the farmer so we need high quality raw milk, then we heat the milk to 32° and put the bacteria inside Renit we have to wait because Renit establishes a relationship between fat and protein.

You are cutting the Curts to a size of four to 6 mm and then you heat them again to 53°, you pump them into the shapes and then you press that for 12 hours the cheese is pressed under hydraulic pressure for up to 12 hours, then it spends 8 weeks in the hot fermentation cellar at 22°C and then goes to a storage vendor for up to 2 months before being picked up by the wholesaler. This makes the famous sweet taste and soft texture of the cheese the world famous holes that are created by a reaction in the bacteria after 1 month of storage.

A strain of bacteria proposes the Sherman bacteria consumes lactic acid and releases carbon dioxide in These bubbles get trapped in the rind of the cheese and form holes also known as eyes, but why are cheeses so big? The size of emala wheels is highly regulated, since most have a diameter of 80 to 100 cm. They must weigh a minimum of 75 kg for the cheese produced here per kilogram. It costs 19 Swiss francs or $19, so a wheel could cost more than $1,900. We also have to pay taxes in Switzerland and for 200 years they have the regulation that you have to pay taxes per piece and not per kilogram, so they make a big wheel of cheese and I have to pay taxes only once and for 200 years we still produce this with a minimum of 75 kgam Wheels, the cheese is matured in a classic 4 months, 8 months reserve, 12 additional months and the 24 month laurel has the taste of the whole M aop uh, it's unique. um compared to um copies, it compares if you have a red wine and a good red wine, we visited shaer restaurant to try the cheese and we chose the classic one, it's 4 months old, what you can see is the stretchy type of rubbery texture. uh let's try it, it's much tastier than other emala I've tried, it has a really intense flavor because it's made with raw milk, not pastured milk that you can get in the states, uh, it's just very, very It has a rich full dairy flavor that, uh, is very tasty, but how is it different from aged 12 Monon?

It's a lot less cheerful and lively to the touch, but that rich nutty flavor is really starting to come through in this room downstairs as I walked in here into the dairy, there was the room that, the moment you walk in, there's a beautiful aroma. nutty that hits you and that's exactly what you can get in cheese. It has now gone from being a soft, fruity cheese to something that is If you know this texture and it is too nutty to be a real emala cheese, it should have the emala logo and a personalized cheese number on the r.

We put our mark on top before we press the cheese and this is kind of like a tea bag and this grows right on the R, so if you're cutting the cheese wheel into pieces, on each R, you should find a piece of this Emal Switzerland logo and you will also find a small number on the top and with this number, our customers. You can go to our website at point CH and provide this number within um and Google Maps shows you where this product was produced, in what country and the dairies need to have this protection.

Emala is the most copied cheese in the world, so 95% of it is sold. like a swiss cheese or a cheese with Hol called ental are fake emal so Emer Switzerland um the brand is protected by the aop label and we also have a bacteria inside our cheese we are the only cheese brand that uses this and so We can not only look at the package if it is original Mentar Aop um, we can also analyze this product, and these are our activities and the brand itself, we have people who work only to search for the origin among the copies, so it is Ramírez collects his catches of private fishermen in the bustling port of MOS, but with rising ocean temperatures, sardine populations have declined by more than 80%.

It got so bad that in 2004 regulators banned fishing during the spring spawning season in the In the following years, the government shortened the entire fishing season to just 6 months and set a fishing quota. Last year, fishermen caught only 30,000 tons. Compared to the 1980s, when they caught more than 100,000 tonnes a year, recent sardine prices doubled during the season. The fish arrives fresh at the factory and goes directly to cleaning. We know that the good quality of the sardine, for example, is the summer season and during this time we intensify the activity to do as much as possible but continue producing all year round.

When Bann Ramirez Fisheries introduced this freezing system in 2015, the fish first went into brine for 30 minutes and then into the freezer at about 0° Fahrenheit. F is in charge of quality control and food safety, they will stay in the freezer for up to 6 months, but Fatima says it doesn't affect the fish much because sardines are naturally very fatty at 400 p.m. workers take the fish out of the freezer so they can thaw it overnight. From now on, the thawed fish goes through the same machines as the fresh ones, the head is removed and the tail is cut off.

This used to be all done by hand, but this machine has tripled the speed of removing casings, but some of the products, such as fillets, are too delicate for machines. The workers of these linesspecialties still cut them by hand using centuries-old techniques. Once packaged, they put a lid on them and group them into batches. They are cooked for 30 minutes first in hot steam and then in dry heat. Once ready, workers add other natural ingredients such as hot sauce. Peppers or carrots, then the cans are weighed and then this machine sprays some water with tomato sauce or olive oil and the cans fall into baskets.

In this pool of recycled rainwater, workers push cans into this sterilizing machine to kill any bacteria on the outside. In theory, a can of fish could last more than a decade. It was actually a Frenchman who invented preserves in the early 19th century, when Napoleon called for a way to feed his army and the method gained popularity with its long stretch of coastline and abundance of fish. Portugal was ready to enter the market and in 1853 Manuel's great-great-grandfather opened the world's first fish market. canning factory in Villa Río de Santo Antonio in the 1920s there were hundreds of competing factories along the coast and during World War II there was room for all of them Portugal was neutral so it exported cans to both sides some cans were They found in Hitler's bunker some of them were Portuguese and came from our company and in 1940 the grandson of the founder opened a new factory where it is now in Monush.

By then, the sardine had become a cultural icon, but after World War II the industry began to decline, we were a revolution. in 1974 and many companies did not have a freezing area, they had difficult times of course, so there was no chance of freezing. Climate change and overfishing also largely contributed to the decline. In 2013, there were only 20 Canaries left, so how did Ramírez stay afloat first because of his The loyal staff spanning generations Ramírez runs a daycare on site and many of his current employees graduated from there. The second reason the original cans were opened with a key and were often made of tinplate that rusted more easily, which is why Manuel's grandfather switched to aluminum cans in the past. 70s we developed together with our can supplier, an easy way to open sardines or tuna along with freezing system, fish cutting and sealing machines.

Ramirez also added this finishing linearity lab that draws almost 100 sample cans throughout the day and performs pH testing. levels and checking that sealing and sterilization were done correctly, all of these machines have tripled the company's production speed from 100,000 cans per day in 2015 to 300,000 cans per day now to finally remain competitive when sardine populations declined. Ramírez added new products tuna salad mackerel salmon and cod So, this difficulty became Oort to make other very interesting products. Today, the company sells 70 different products and features an online shopping platform that we export to almost 50 countries, distribute around the world, while populations could fall again.

Manuel doesn't seem worried because he's been here for almost two centuries, so I think we'll get through them. These are sugar maples and the Maple Guild has 460,000 of them spread throughout the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont and Canada beginning in December of each year. Crews spend two months putting down plastic Tap each of these trees by hand, the same tree can be tapped for decades next year we'll reuse everything and uh, we tap 8 inches is high or short and 8 inches more so we never damage a tree, always allows you to heal. The sugar season generally runs from February to April, but that depends entirely on the weather forecast, obviously, when the weather cooperates and when mother nature gives us sap to extract and that is when the temperature is above freezing during the day and below zero at night. when the sap is running when the sap is running it is extracted through vacuum tubes or by gravity 6,000 miles of plastic tubes transport the sap from the trees to the pumping stations.

These are called reverse osmosis houses. This is where the sap is collected and the water in the sap is collected. It is filtered leaving a high sugar content. The concentrated sap has 2% sugar. The concentrate has 20% sugar. So what we are doing in the reverse osmosis process is removing water from the sap and concentrating the maple syrup in another solution because a lot of water is removed during this process, it takes about 44 gallons of sap to make just one gallon of maple syrup. The sugar concentrate is loaded onto trucks and taken to the Sugar House, where it is eventually turned into maple syrup using traditional sugaring techniques, turning the sap into syrup means boiling it over direct heat so the water evaporates, but Maple Guild He pioneered a new method that speeds up the process.

It's called steam brewing. Instead of boiling the sap, it is heated with steam at a lower temperature using coils. With this system, the Maple Guild can manufacture it. 55 gallons of maple syrup in just 90 seconds, while traditional boiling techniques can take between 9 and 56 hours to produce just 1 gallon of syrup, the steam brewing method is not only faster, but the The company says it also produces a more nuanced maple flavor. Because the sap can spoil quickly, it needs to be transported to the sugar house within 3 hours of being extracted and usually within 6 hours it will turn into that golden maple syrup.

When the sap is working, it can work for a day. It can work for a week. and then it can stop for two days or 3 weeks and in reality it is whatever the weather gives us, but as long as that sap is working we will have people in this plant 18, 24 hours a day without stopping while that sap is working because we cannot afford the luxury of doing so. It loses some once the sap is turned into syrup, it is tested to make sure the sugar levels are correct, then it is sent through filters to remove impurities and tested to grade the lighter the color of the syrup. , the higher the grade because Guild maple syrup has a short cooking time it is lighter in color which gives it a consistent grade a golden rating the golden syrup is then pumped into stainless steel barrels where it is stored until the Once bottled, each bottle is filled, capped, cleaned and labeled by hand here.

The company expects to fill more than a million bottles this year. Maple Guild is vertically integrated, meaning it owns every step of this process. , from tree to table, the maple industry has been stagnant for decades and decades and decades, they are all small farmers doing their thing on their own properties selling to the big Gators and those guys who make syrup, mostly brands private, some branded and they sell them to the industry until we get there and we are a vertically integrated company, we own the trees throughout the manufacturing, it is very capital intensive, which is probably the barrier.

For anyone to be able to do this in the last 5 years, the maple syrup industry has undergone something of a revolution and at the forefront are companies like Maple Guild Canada, which has historically dominated this market, producing 70% of the world's maple syrup. world and, although it still has first place, the US is gaining ground. United States production has doubled in the last decade, going from 1.9 million gallons produced in 2008 to 4.16 million in 2018 and leading The burden is on Vermont, dubbed the maple syrup capital of the US, the small state produces. In fact, Vermont production has grown 24% since 2000, so the market was primed for large-scale production. , but no one in the Vermont maple industry had adopted the unconventional sugaring model until the Maple Guild came along. came on the scene when demand was taking off;

Breweries across the state had begun using maple syrup in their products; Interest in pure maple syrup had increased and Americans, excited about healthy foods, were turning to maple syrup as a natural alternative to refined sugar and maple. Guild is still riding that wave selling brand name products in 50 states and infusing their syrups with flavors like coffee, pumpkin spice and bourbon, you have original vanilla, Bourbon coffee and salted caramel, it smells like wood, where it came from, it tastes like sugar. In and although it all depends on what Mother Nature gives them, the Maple Guild has an annual production goal, our goals are 150 to 200,000.gallons of maple syrup uh, we would be okay with the company not just bottling it as syrup but to use it in 17 other maple-based products.

First is the maple butter. The maple syrup is cooked and then poured into this mixer until it becomes a delicious cream that is cooked and packaged by hand and then hits the assembly line to be capped and labeled this is what I've been waiting for all This time it's like frosting, it's so good there's also naturally fermented maple vinegar eight different maple-sweetened teas and S exclusive maple-sweetened waters, the Maple Guild hopes that by introducing maple into as many categories as possible it can show the versatility of the product and draw attention to the origin of the golden syrup, here in a forest in Vermont, then we headed home to New Zealand. to one of the most expensive honeys in the world.

Manuka honey is known for being earthier, richer and more viscous than many other honeys. It comes from the nectar of the lepto sper y scaparo flower, also known as Manuka, which is only native to New Zealand and in fact, Manuka is To start with, the bee travels up to approximately 6 kilometers to collect this honey, so this honey It is representative of the environment and that environment is New Zealand. the plant itself and the honey is very, very rare among all the honeys in the world, it probably represents 1% of all the honeys in the world. It's hard to harvest, it's only a 2-6 week harvest period and the flower is only open for 12 days and in New Zealand we have wind and rain and everything else so there's a lot of luck involved and getting the bee or a lot effort on the part of the Beekeeper and for some years there is no honey production for some beekeepers and we have to go to the extent of using helicopters to collect this honey, although Manuka bushes can also be found in Australia.

New Zealand accounts for almost all global production with exports worth $24 million expected to quadruple to $800 million by 2028 New Zealand honey is protected by a quality standard that safeguards the special properties of Manuka. This honey is an expensive honey and anything that is expensive, people will try and copy, people will try and imitate or people will try and cheat, so a lot of the cost. here it is and actually in the protection of all the research, so we know it's unique, we know it's from New Zealand, we can identify it. We have placed laboratories around the world to be able to make this identification.

The New Zealand government has set a standard for saying what manukan is, so how does the grading system work and what exactly do you look for in Manuka honey? We spoke to Dr. Adrien Charlton from Farah Science, a laboratory in the north of England where Manuka honey is tested to identify its unique compounds. standard, we will test three compounds: dihydroxyacetone, known as DHA, methylgloxy, known as MGO, and hydroxymethylfuol, HMF. These are the basic tests we would perform to ensure that Manuka honey contains the antimicrobial characteristics that Manuka honey contains. The consumer would expect us to be able to detect them, but we can also measure their concentration and that is done using ultraviolet light to detect individual compounds of particular wavelength.

Each compound has slightly different properties, but because of past problems with possible fraud, there is a host of other tests, including tests for compounds like lepto sparin, which is a unique marker of leptum scoparium nectar, we can trace the honey back to its botanical origin, the plant it comes from when you take a bottle of Manuka. Honey, markers can be confusing, so how do you know it's real? In some cases, they are labeled for the concentration of a compound, so MGO 300 would indicate 3 mg of methylglyoxal in that particular jar of honey per kilogram of NPA, which non-peroxide activity is related to the mythical overall concentration, but It is a more direct measure of the antimicrobial activity of py and other brands, as a quality mark than if you can see a particular seal on a product that has been tested and assured to a certain standard, so it is different from labeling it with the concentration of a particular compound.

Another factor that is driving up the price is the use of Manuka honey in health and beauty products; Its antibacterial and anti-inflammatory properties are said to be. to soothe and nourish the skinand it is also said to help with blemishes and acne, but is it really so? There have been several studies that have attempted to determine the helping benefits of Manuka honey and there are some very positive results and certainly In terms of antimicrobial activity of ants, we can show that Manuka honey has antimicrobial activity in the laboratory and that those Clinical trials over a long period of time have not been done yet, but there are many reports that indicate that Manuka honey has benefits, but it has not yet been proven, so the jury is still out on the medicinal properties of Manuka, but That hasn't stopped its popularity and Manuka honey is serious business, prices and demand for honey are so high that New Zealand Police have received hundreds of reports of hives or honey theft and even reports of poisoned bees, so if you manage to get your hands on a jar, does it really taste any different than regular honey?

OMG, that's delicious, the flavor is really strong. incorrect, it is very thick compared to normal honey, it has a kind of nutty taste, it is not as sweet as usual honey, it is very smooth and the taste is quite similar to what I am used to. The texture is really interesting, it's very, very thick. almost like creamy, manuka honey is really worth 100 times more than other honeys, you can judge that, but what is certain is that no other honey in the world is so rare and unique that it needs to go through a laboratory before being sold . the oldest tofu factory in the United States and in this store they cut 3000 pounds a day and that is Jason, a former professional baseball player who took over Oda 3 years ago.

Jason learned to hand shape tofu in the traditional Japanese way from the original. For owners, it's very cheap to just buy a machine, press buttons and a block of tofu comes out, but making it by hand is definitely a great start, but with the growing tofu industry and rising soybean prices, Jason is juggling tradition. Demand, I work 11 and 12 hour days, you know, 6 days a week, so she's my mom. We visit the Portland factory to see how Jason is turning buckets of beans into this Oda-welcome tofu. I get here at 2:30 in the morning on Monday. until Saturday to make tofu and start the day the night before, the workers take out giant bags of soybeans from Iowa and they are dried soybeans, so they are very hard, you can hardly break them with a hammer, we soak them the night before and then they become very soft, it takes 10 hours of soaking depending on the temperature outside, we tend to soak them longer if it's colder or less time if it's hotter.

We want that pure white in the soybeans, yes they are still pretty good. The cooks transferred the soft soybeans to a. With two grinders we crush the soy to make a granita, then we put it in some pots that are cooked at about 100 °C, then the mixture flows through a giant tube to a filter bag in the pressing machine, this machine squeezes the milk of soy and the milk comes out the other end and falls into another filter, so we filter it twice to obtain soy milk as pure as possible. Okay, this is hot. What's left is a byproduct called okata, basically the remains of the beans, like the shells, so this nylon. that gets the rest of the Oka people, we use it in baking recipes and things like that, but we also give it to farmers to feed their cows and pigs.

Some of the soy milk is bottled by hand, sold throughout Portland, but the rest is made into tofu. Our tofu is made from three ingredients: soy, water and coagulant, the mixture first gets a splash of coagulant, so we use our traditional Japanese coagulant nigadi. We can adjust the amount of coagulant we use to get the firmness we want. In fact, I'll prepare it. It's firm, so I'm going to add a little more coagulant because it might separate a little more from the curds in the water. It's like making cheese, as in cheese, the coagulant separates the whey or liquid from the proteins that clump together. in curd this takes about 15 minutes so this is what it looks like after curdling so these curds are really nice and fluffy and soft.

That mixture that looks like scrambled eggs is placed in molds. Jason shapes it by hand using cheesecloth, so now we just have to press. We give them the firmness we want, it's quite soft, almost like a water bed, we make it medium firm and extra firm, it depends on how much water we squeeze out. The curds in the firm and extra firm are thinner and harder, making it easier to get water. The middle is nice and smooth, a hydraulic press then helps to squeeze out the water after pressing it. Jason carefully flips the tofu in a giant dip, cutting it along the lines of the molds.

The tofu headed to restaurants is cubed and some is fried. What's his name aay, so he's a master at chopsticks, yeah, that's not easy to do with flimsy blocks of tofu. Destined for the stores, I take fish from the water and put them in boxes. I soak soy beans until I get the final product, probably about an hour, everything else. It is actually controlled by hand, although tofu originates from China and nigadi is used to coagulate. Oda's recipe and hand-shaping techniques are uniquely Japanese and come from Japan and date back to the founding of the company, so Oda Tofu began in 1911.

Sao Oda immigrated to Portland from Okama, Japan, shortly . After Saizo and his wife Sheena opened a tofu shop using the same three ingredients Jason used back then, Oda was one of many tofu factories serving the Japanese and Chinese-American communities in East Portland. , but then Pearl Harbor happened and 120,000 Japanese Americans were forced into internment camps. Sheena and Cizo were sent to a camp in Idaho, there Cizo died a year after arriving, during the 3 years of internment, all Japanese owned tofu shops were closed, many were confiscated, looted or sold, but the owner of Odas fulfilled her lease and when Sheena returned to Solo in Portland in 1945, the store and her entire team were waiting for her, they returned and wanted to start the company again.

This shows testimony from the OT family for wanting to do that and then also from the customers who wanted to buy the tofu and actually kept it. the business Alive Jason bought the business from the grandson of Sheena Co and his wife Eileene in 2019 because I heard they were going to close and I thought it would be a shame for a business like this to close its doors, especially with all its history Co a and Eileene OT really me He taught everything there was to know about how to make tofu. This is your team. I inherited all this.

Jason continued the Oda craft tradition. There is a reason why people or companies don't make tofu the way we do it now, with long hours of work. Works on everything that has to do with tofu. I am involved in the entire process. You are the genius of tofu. Yes, now I feel like I'm the Master of Tofu. Because Jason's production process is slower, it is difficult to compete with large factories. They mass produce everything they have. All you have to do is press a button and out comes the tofu, from soaking beans to packaging and pressing.

Everything is very automated, it is very different from our process. I mean, that's what we're competing against because they're low cost and the competition is increasing. tougher as soybean prices rise China is usually one of the largest buyers of US soybeans, but in 2019 soybean tariffs cornered China out of the market, they helped drive down our soybean prices because The demand was not there, but when tariffs were reduced in 2021 China came back -I entered the market hoarding soybeans and causing prices to skyrocket. Soybean prices have not been this high in 7 years. Soybean prices have risen dramatically by 40% in the last two months, so I have had to increase prices and I think all tofu manufacturers have.

I had to increase the price, you just can't eat much of the cost, but Jason's customers don't seem to mind, we don't mind spending more because we want high quality food. We have done business with them for 20 years and customers love them. Can. Never switch to another brand to keep up with competition and supply costs. Jason made small changes, first redesigning the package, then purchasing that packaging machine. He also launched Oda on Med's social media and his strategy has worked in attracting new young restaurateurs like Chef Tai. He has received a lot of attention for his Sandos made with Oda tofu.

I'm from Japan when I ate their tofu. I feel like I'm in Japan, so I'm going to make a miso and tofu cat, which is vegan and catchy for Instagram, you know? I love it Jason now sells Oda tofu and soy milk in over 150 restaurants around Portland. We're making about 80% more and tofu is expected to continue to become more popular in 2020. The global market was worth $746 million and is projected to grow more than 5% over the next 6 years, nutritionists say that's because it is rich in proteins, amino acids and nutrients. I think people are starting to realize that Jason believes he has two options to deal with growing demand: move to a larger space or open factories in other cities. but their biggest goal is to ensure that tradition is not sacrificed in favor of innovation in Miyazaki Japan, we learn where farmers grow Harvest and auction the most expensive mangoes in the world The mangoes grown in Miyazaki are of the Irwin mango variety, a type often called apple mango, as it turns red when ripe.

Irwin mangoes are quite common and are also grown in other parts of the world and sold at much lower prices. This is because the exclusivity of Tao no tomago is not tied to what type of mango it is, but rather to the care it receives to generate buzz at the auction. A mango needs bees to increase its chances of success. Farmers like takuya usually rent bees. During the flowering season these are flowering mango plants that play a crucial role in the pollination of the plants, since without them the mangoes would not grow as much as desired, if a plant continues to flower as the farmer wants, it can survive up to 35 years.

Takuya's plants are 20 years old, however, even if they pollinate the plants, they do not. This does not necessarily mean that all mangoes will qualify as Tao not tomago this season, only those that are in good condition, visibly contain bones and are in good position will have the opportunity to grow successfully. Everything in the greenhouse needs to run smoothly. The temperature must be constant the room is ventilated the air is dehumidified and the handles protected from gravity when everything else is in place takuya's priority becomes sunlight if a handle falls in the shade takuya will tie it with a rope to lift it and make sure that the sunlight touches each part of the fruit equally developed these light reflectors Milk Curtain no matter how much it is worth Takuya treats each mango with respect in return each mango pays him with a unique flavor yours has been growing mangoes for 16 years, a trade he learned This year, his father grew 9,500 mangoes in his greenhouse.

They are now ready to be inspected to see how many of them have obtained the coveted title of Tao not tomago. The first inspection is performed by human eye inspectors who closely analyze the appearance of each handle to ensure. They read throughout with no hints of green at the bottom, then a machine sorts them based on sugar content, weight and size. These inspections classify mangoes into five grades, two of which are Tio. The mangoes will now arrive at the Miyazaki central wholesale market. For the auction, all the care and hard work that Takuya and other farmers in the prefecture put into their fruit are leading up to this very moment.

The hope is to equal or exceed the previous figure of 500,000 yen. The auction has officially started at Miyazaki Central. This year's 500,000 yen at the wholesale market is 300,000 yen more than last year and matches the record of 2019 and the farmer who grew these mangoes is Takuya. It is the third consecutive year that his mangoes reached the highest price at the auction in which they were purchased by a department. store in Fukuoka Today's result was successful for takuya, but even in a country with a strong gift culture like Japan, it is not always guaranteed that such a luxurious fruit will find a buyer at auction after flowering, fruiting, harvesting and auctioning .

Takuya mango plants are ready for A new season has arrived and the hard work is not over yet. Japan is also where a unique number of soy sauce manufacturers still produce the famous condiment authentically. What makes soy sauce special is the wooden barrel called kioke, which can last more than a century. Youo makes bamboo strips to wrap the barrel because the salinity of the soy sauce can corrode the metal. At least three people are needed to assemblea keg, but not many do this anymore after Modern Machinery took over the market, almost all kioke manufacturers in Japan went out of business. business, so he learned to make his own before these barrels are used, the crushed wheat and steamed soybeans are mixed with Koji, the fungus that will start the fermentation process, this giant vat regulates the temperature so that the mushroom can grow after 2 days, the mixture is used up. to the moromi house, this is where the wooden barrels help create the breeding ground for bacteria.

More than a ton of the soybean mixture fills each barrel along with salt water as Yuo and his team stir the soybeans, colliding with each other and creating small tears so other bacteria can enter and begin breaking them down. Workers pump air into the barrel. to make the aerobic yeast more active Even though Yuo says the microbes do most of the work, his part of the work still requires him to check the soybeans each time. day to see if they need to be mixed, and based on how they smell and look, he can tell where they are in the process.

The soybeans will ferment here for at least a year and a half. Yuo has 87 barrels in different phases. He believes that a good barrel is one. These types of barrels have been produced in Japan since at least the 17th century, but everything changed during World War II, when materials became scarcer and more expensive in Japan, the government knew its people could not live without their basic condiment, so they ordered factories to make production cheaper and faster, reducing the process from years to months, so while many brewers were expanding and modernizing small businesses like Yo's, Yo's families were barely could keep up, you stepped in in 2003, just before your father suddenly became ill and had to retire, so we had to take over and get a struggling business out of debt.

He also had to teach himself much of the process, such as how to use the press, after a year and a half of fermentation. Yubo places the soy mixture into this machine and layers it on a piece. of traditional wrapping cloth, then the machine slowly squeezes out the soy sauce for 10 days. Some industrial factories press it all at once, but Yuo says that to obtain a quality product it is a matter of patience. After this stage, some of the soy sauce goes back to the barrel with more soybeans and wheat for two more years to make From Yu's main product, saishi, a darker, stronger tasting soy sauce, when the microbes have enough time to naturally ferment the soybeans, it gives the soy sauce a sweeter aftertaste.

Some industrial brands imitate this by adding sweeteners that balance the Umami flavor. It's what chefs like Itoshi Kishimoto are after running his Kyomi restaurant in Shodoshima for 5 years, and almost every dish he cooks uses naturally fermented soy sauce, including Yu brand, to keep traditional soy sauce going. Barrel production must be maintained, that is why Yuo holds barrel making workshops every year. He sells his authentic soy sauce to people all over the world. A bottle costs $35 on Amazon, about triple the price of a commercial alternative. Passing on the legacy of bombed soy sauce is part of his life's mission. a third generation matagi farmer on his farm in t m prefactor, you will only find virgin cows, it is the main requirement for any of the 0 Matsu Saka wagu farms here in M ​​prefecture.

Matsusaka beef has long been praised for its extremely low melting point, which is half that of wagu types, this means that when cooking the fat melts in less time to achieve this intense marbling. Old generations of farmers like hi hii's dad used to feed cows beer, although there is no evidence that this practice increases the cows' appetite. associate Matsu Saka wagi with that, the fact that Matsu Saka has kept a relatively low profile. International Al has almost transformed this practice into a legend. Hiroi no longer practices this, but has perfected the feed and practices circular farming for the cost of feed.

It is an important factor that drives prices up to the point that smooth-marbled matsusaka cows need to eat a lot and also need to eat for much longer than other cows. Matsusaka cows are raised for 30 to 32 months, 6 months longer than other Japanese black cows. cattle it all adds up over time to hiroi feed costs monitor temperature air circulation and clean enclosures regularly to avoid flies Farmers here call this breeding period fattening for the first 3 to 4 months cattle eat grass to develop a strong digestive system, this is called the belly building period Then comes the final period where the cattle gradually switch to concentrated legs and rice straw for fattening Hoki is now experimenting with even longer fattening periods by raising his cattle from 35 to 40 months but raising cows for a long time.

It can also be dangerous for hioki, as a cow could get sick and die. A cow at the end of its fattening period is a true treasure. Every year matsusaka cows are auctioned and one is crowned queen of matsusaka, while the highest price ever achieved for one of these. The cows cost 50 million yen in 2002. This auction has never really seen a low price, with an average of around 20 million yen. Events like the auction have also fostered another legend that farmers in Matsusaka massage their cows with alcohol this time it is not to improve their appetite but for appearance it is not just the adult cows that cost a lot the carvings can be very expensive hiroi no He raises his cattle from birth to 10 months.

The carvings are also sold at auctions throughout Japan. Hiruki spends almost half of his time at work buying carvings and fors. He is very demanding. Bms2 is the highest grain grade for Wu in Japan. The more intense the veining, the higher the price for customers in Tokyo. 100 G of sirloin costs 10,000 yen, but that is still much less than what Parisians pay at Maria Gia, where the same cut is made. It is sold in 360 The premium cut loin sells for €5,000 per kilo The Paris restaurant was the first to successfully export matsusaka wagu outside of Japan and include it on its menu Its most expensive tasting menu costs €520 Matsusaka wagu is heavily regulated to include matsusaka meat on the menu the restaurant had to follow strict rules the Paris restaurant needed to apply for a license that took a year to be accredited to maintain it the restaurant must have a high rating on Google Maps and there cannot be another restaurant serving Matsu Saka wagu within 840 M radius as of 2023 hiroi has sent only three cows to Maria caner due to this limited supply, 520 menu with ethor ranch premium tenderloin is served on a single table per day, this exclusivity is set To get a little more flexible over the past 10 years, Japan has been a major importer of American beef importing an average of $1.83 billion a year, while millions of Wu made the opposite journey by rising to fame. internationally a decline in tourism after the covid-19 outbreak. and a change in consumer behavior towards cheaper meats exacerbated this and now Japanese farmers are looking outside the country's borders, the export quotation of Matsu Saka has increased from 24 in 2022 to 700 in 2024, of which They are the most premium cuts that are exported. high-end restaurants like Mariaa in Paris, this is pushing farmers who want to ship abroad to bet on those lucrative but dangerous long fattening periods.

People in the Andes have been eating quinoa long before it hit the shelves of gourmet markets for centuries. The Peruvians have ground the grain. For making flour and fermenting chicha, a popular drink, quinoa was sacred to the Incas, who called it the mother grain because it grew well in difficult conditions and flourished in areas where other crops struggled. The grain has adapted as weather patterns have changed in recent years, but growing it is still a struggle. Osio is one of around 68,000 quinoa farmers in Peru and has been in the fields with his family since he was just 10.

Years the season for planting quinoa begins at the end of summer the workers gather early in the morning and pass around handfuls of cocoa leaves and then call on Pacha Mama or Mother Earth to help them get the job done quickly. Osio says that the plant acts as a mild stimulant that gives them strength. Osio and his family sew the seeds after the soil has been removed. raked and fertilized about 7 months later they harvest the crop by hand then cut the branches and remove the edible parts of the grain shake the grain to remove excess soil and then move the quinoa to a small warehouse about a decade ago Osio and his family would have traveled all over the country to sell their quinoa, but that is now the job of Copan Cabana, a cooperative that represents more of the farmers of southern Peru.

Representatives of cooperatives like usio visit the farms to inspect the grains that the cooperatives pay for. Farmers like Ignasio process around 12,200 tons of quinoa each year at the Cooperative's facilities for $150 per kilo. Once the quinoa reaches their warehouse, workers wash it thoroughly twice to remove a bitter chemical called saponin. , they divide the quinoa into categories, remove impurities, and then package it. makes its way abroad The Cooperative says it exports to the US, the European Union and Japan. In the US, the product has become increasingly popular. America imports about a third of all the quinoa in the world, but it wasn't always like that.

The quinoa used used to be largely unknown. outside the Andes, but everything began to change in 2009, when the Peruvian government began establishing free trade agreements, it became easier for companies to export to the US and beyond. In the years that followed, trade between Peru and the US reportedly grew, word spread about the nutritious, gluten-free, high-protein superfood, this was when the ketogenic diet was taking off and this kind of conventional wisdom existed. that, hey, look among all those grains you can eat, quinoa probably has the strongest effect. In terms of protein, the United Nations even declared 2013 as the International Year of Quinoa to celebrate the ancient practices of the Andean people, basically highlighting quinoa as something people should consume for their health and that really led to the whole thing.

The average price of quinoa in Peru almost doubled between 2012 and 2014 and it wasn't just the producers who benefited. The increase in quinoa sales helped locals who did not even work with the crop; There was probably some kind of trickle-down effect in the economy. Where the increase in the price of quinoa led to the people who sold it being significantly better off and spending part of those funds in the economy. In 2011, almost 80% of the country's quinoa was produced in the Puno region, but the farmers occurred in other parts of the country. Some reportedly relied on chemical fertilizers to grow the grain in 2014.

Peru set a record for quinoa production, but Peruvian farmers faced problems for centuries. The grain had been harvested primarily in the Andes because it thrives at high altitudes, but the quinoa. Farmers began to appear in other parts of the world. I think globalization is a double-edged sword, in a case like this, these households can benefit from the global demand for that product, but it also means that it has really pushed other regions of the world to experiment with growing quinoa. The market was flooded with quinoa, causing prices to fall in late 2015. Farmers in Peru reportedly began to struggle and some had to sell. cattle to survive others held on to their quinoa in the hope that prices would rise again, but in 2020 the price of quinoa in Peru had fallen to about half of its 2014 peak, meanwhile farmers in Peru are producing more quinoa than ever, but the type sold in supermarkets represents only a fraction of the 3,000 varieties that can be harvested here.

Farmers traditionally grew different types of quinoa to ensure that at least some would thrive if weather conditions were harsh, but some have abandoned this practice to focus on the most lucrative varieties and experts fear this may mean losing many varieties of the ancient crop. , that is why many are brought here to the National Institute of Agricultural Innovation. Some of those less common strains could have uses beyond food. Ignacio says he would eventually like to sell baked goods like cookies made from quinoa, but for now he has to focus on what sells today. Steve and his team are working on a test session toBurger King, they'll use it to try to get the customer, yeah, well, Brett Curtz Whale is a veteran food stylist, his job is to make the burger. he looks like a Whopper, usually has a budget of a couple thousand and always buys way more than he will ever use so he can pick out the perfect bun, Patty and veggies, then he gets to work but doesn't cook the meat. until the end because he didn't want to shrink me too much, he wanted to get as much volume out of this piece of meat as he could.

Even perfect burgers need finishing touches, so he uses a colorant made from sauce darkener and soap to add. A charred look only has to paint half the burger because the camera films only one side. A mixture of Vaseline and pulverized meat helps fill the holes and that grill marks another trick of the trade. Brett heats up metal skewers and then simply pushes the burger with the hot metal and then charred. Melt the cheese using a steamer. How did you change it to make it edible? I just said you're for food, but I'm also. trying to control how much comes out, so I've plugged some of the holes.

He cuts the onions and tomatoes on an angle so they are flatter. I would have been a very good surgeon in another life, well, yes, my mother would have been. happier some other tricks denture cream to hold the ingredients for condensation in the cans we'll use glycerin yes, not too far while Brett finishes Steve's equipment makes sure everything is ready on set the trickiest part is combining the what the client wants in the commercial with what is technologically possible they have no idea about engineering, yes, they are like robots, they are great, we want a robot, but since today you are working on a test session, you just have to implement your own vision .

I will be one of those. people using protection, then turn to master quantity surveyor Matthew Huber. He says that half the time he has to build the platforms completely from scratch, they provide the structure for the specialized equipment that makes the food dance on the screen. Their work goes hand in hand and with robots, the robot is obviously a hugely complicated and expensive thing that is used for a lot of what we do, but if you just need a straight line movement backwards, it's easier to set up a simple machine than just do a type of movement like these.

Air pistons that he uses to launch food or these catapults to save on buying new parts. He uses many of the same base pieces. It's like Legos. You know, just put things together. Take them apart and do something different with them next time. I've used many of these pieces, probably hundreds of times, meanwhile, Andreas Ramirez is finalizing the set from the tables to the ketchup bottles on the side. I want it to feel real, so if he's blank it won't feel like it's real. It's a real commercial kitchen, every inch visible to the camera is important, so the Paa team built this tile wall just for this shoot, but they said it still felt empty, so we added these new two floating shelves up there, We plan something and then we just have to be prepared for the unexpected.

Her typical prop budget is $40,000 per shoot, but she can pull a lot from his personal collection. It's been 20 years of collecting and this is like Salvation Army garage cells. Years and years of hoarding. I always like to have an extra um, so if you're filming an example, a soda glass, I need to have at least six of the same glasses for quick changes if they're scratched, uh, because it's a video, so it's a little bit, you know. breaks exactly, so when that burger arrives it's time to play, I have to go to the set, yay, burger, now it's a race against the clock, the tomatoes on the angle feel good, can we melt the cheese a little more on Anywhere to warm up a bit?

Go ahead and turn the camera and push a little bit closer, alright, today they have custom made water cooled lights that don't turn on the food that we used to have, like these really hot lights that would like to cook the food and it would go out real quick. , as if it were ice cream. It seems impossible to film in slow motion because it would just melt the moment you turn on the lights, but that lettuce will start to wilt in a matter of minutes. Hot lights are not robots that move that fast and tons of planning is essential to keep us filming on time.

Because any delay could mean going over budget, the first action uses a Dolly Zoom to create something known as the Hitchcock effect, but the entire background is like warping around it, the robots, actually being the same type that build cars, this robot costs $150,000 and can make pretty much any move you can think of sometimes you can program the robot pretty quickly some moves take a whole day here's the second shot Steve imagined the camera moving across a field of hamburgers while each an era taken out of frame we're probably only an inch and a half away from that burger when we land, so trying to do that with people would be nearly impossible.

It's a really complex movement that robots do very easily and they do it exactly the same way every time, but speed is not the only challenge, each shot has to be identical if a strawberry has an error of even a centimeter or If something on set gets hit between takes they may have to start over with the fries, they don't want to behave, this laser helps them keep track of the shots. Burger position or sometimes you can do a job where you know 100 takes the same move, like you think it's going to be an approach, they also have to be very flexible on set, there are always curveballs that happen because there are a lot of problems to solve, so I In the last shot, Steve ties all the ingredients on a fishing line and a robot cuts the rope and the camera captures the perfect fall.

This exact move was actually Steve's claim to fame in 2016, he made this famous Burger Drop video that went viral on the internet. He slowly gained millions of views across all platforms and Global Publications began covering his work. All the buzz on social media earned him many viewers and new customers, and he was able to launch the garage in 2019. The burger delivery was like the spark that started the path to where we are today and now Tik Tok is crazier than Instagram for my. Steve is a former food photographer, but he wanted to combine his love of food engineering and video and,

surprising

ly, there is a job that allows me to do that there.

There are many different jobs that my guidance counselor didn't tell me about, including mine. Today, his team films 40 commercials a year and makes more than five million a year. It looks like CGI, but it's actually done in camera and I think to achieve it. The feeling of being bigger in life requires a lot of technology and skill. Steve says they know they've done a good job when viewers can't see that an entire production is hidden behind one shot. They have no idea what we do in the end. It's funny to me that people understand how complex this is, but all that complexity is worth it because there is a lot of money at stake.

Fast food companies spent $5 billion on advertising in 2019, and for good reason they know it. How Valuable the Power of Food Suggestion Can Be A Yel University study found that visual cues such as food advertisements can have an effect on food cravings. Another study showed that visual cues can influence overeating and even weight gain and that can be converted into traffic and impressions for a brand. You are responsible for many people breaking a diet. These brands led the pack and advertising spend in 2019 and budgets continue to increase in September. Burger King announced it will invest $400 million in restaurant renovations and advertising, a 30% increase from 2021, so Steve and his team filmed this Whopper launch in hopes of hooking a new customer with its dancing robots and Juicy Burgers.