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I'm Bill Roberts, [audio skip]
Science Department in a dilemma.

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Our per capita income is just
above fortieth in the nation.

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There's a scarcity of jobs

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and opportunities, both
on the farms and in the cities.

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Our best young people are leaving
the state by the thousands.

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This is a gloomy picture,

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but there is something
that we can do about it.

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We're primarily an agricultural state.

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Our basic resources are land and people,
and we can build on this great heritage.

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[music]

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Winds of change are
sweeping across our landscape

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turning rural crossroads into towns,
towns into cities, cities into urban centers.

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And to feed
the shifting and rising population

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our farmlands [audio skip] transforming, 
our industries widening their enterprise.

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Tobacco and cotton,

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though still profitable crops,

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have lost their monopoly over our best soils in the
face of a new agricultural opportunity—

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the production and processing of food.

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It is said that North Carolina will
become a horn of plenty for the east,

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and with good cause.

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 In her fertile soils,

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vegetable crops luxuriate twice over through a

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a two hundred eighty day coastal plain season.

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Fruits are mellowed
in a rare Appalachian climate.

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Fifty inches of rainfall annually join her

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many rivers spilling
westward toward the Mississippi,

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eastward into the vast
coast land of Atlantic fishing waters.

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Livestock and poultry are now an industry

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nourished by a benevolent
climate and scientific research.

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Already, this new wealth of the soil

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and sea is being tapped
by food processing plants

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where it is preserved, packaged and sped over some
of the nation's finest roadways to the hungry public,

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including those at this restaurant table.

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A meal in fifteen minutes.

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Fish from the Chesapeake Bay, frozen
just like the greens from New Jersey.

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Potatoes dehydrated from Idaho.

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A salad made of lettuce from California,

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savored with a dressing
ready made in Illinois.

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For dessert, cherries shipped
and frozen from Michigan.

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These are processed foods, a meal
almost cooked before it's purchased.

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We could not provide this
meal away from home,

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this variety of foods,
if it weren't for the food processing.

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Well why not, [?]?

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Well, Bill, back in the old days when I

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first started in this business, you used
to have to keep the chickens in the basement.

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You'd have to go down,
kill those chickens, pick them, cut them up.

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You used to have half cattle coming
through your back door.

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Had to have a fancy meat cutter
to break down that [?] of cattle to get it

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down in the sections of parts
of the meat that you wanted to use.

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Then it would be very difficult to get

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each size of a portion, just cut
into the exact size you wanted.

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And also you had this
job of peeling potatoes.

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You had to do a lot of potato peeling,

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had to do a lot of cutting, whereas today
all of that type food comes in ready to go

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to the oven, or to the frying pan.

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And the uniformity means so much.

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You got four people sitting
at a table like this.

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You can be sure that four people are
going to get the exact same

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quality and the same portion.

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We feed three thousand
people a day, a million meals a year.

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So many people eating
away from home these days,

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you might call this mass feeding here,
institutional feeding.

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And just like there are lines to
the school, the government, the hospitals,

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we had to be pretty demanding

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when it comes to food, we buy—
quality, standards, and uniformity.

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If the hungry American public likes it's
meals in a hurry at the restaurant

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it also likes home meals
without fuss and bother.

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To get semi-prepared foods

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the housewife turns to one of the biggest
food buyers of all—the chain supermarket.

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The story of the supermarket is really
evidence of a food revolution in America,

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convenience and time saving.

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The customers are
looking for foods that are convenient.

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They no longer look for the items
that you have to soak, stir, and mix.

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They look for items now
that you heat, serve, and eat.

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To whether this food revolution is caused
by new marketing techniques or

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by the increased tempo of people
on the move is hard for me to say,

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but one thing for sure,

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we in the supermarkets are going
to have to please the housewife.

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She will always be the boss.

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Most housewives I know

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are much to busy to spend time in the kitchen and
even spend time shopping for that matter.

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Thank heavens

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they're able to get so many
foods at the grocery store

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that are already half
prepared, saving time.

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Think of how long it would
take to shuck all that corn.

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I don't think it's necessary really today to shop

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but once a week if you're
smart and if you have a freezer.

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Well I know what some here are thinking,
the old fashion taste of old fashioned cooking,

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back before there was
mention of food processing.

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But before some of you make the reckless
accusation that foods don't taste like they used to

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beware of our [?] housewife.

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I think one of the most ridiculous
charges in the world is that

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you can't be a good cook
and use processed food.

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I buy as many foods that
will save me time as possible

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to save time to devote to a family
of four children and a husband.

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And I think, really, that the art of
cooking is in the proper selection of food

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and in seasoning.

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That's what make a satisfied family.

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One of the big problems

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is the distance that we have to transport
some of these convenient foods.

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As an example, we have frozen foods coming

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from California, up
in New Jersey, and down in

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 Georgia.

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We feel that a great many of these items

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could be grown and processed here
in North Carolina,

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and it would be a tremendous saving to
the consumer in freight rate alone.

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We are very North Carolina conscious,

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let me show you.

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We feature products that are processed
in the State of North Carolina.

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Baby food, country ham, dairy products, pickles,
and various other items.

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And we hope that as

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the years go by that there will be
hundreds and hundreds of other items

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processed in North Carolina
that we can sell during this sale.

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Well, I know that this is good news
for our farmers and processors in this

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state, to know that they have an outlet
such as this to sell their product.

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Supermarkets, restaurants,

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food brokers, and canners are all
looking for the dependable, raw product.

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They realize that there will always
be a demand for fresh foods

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but they seek to convince the farmer that
food processing is a serious business proposition,

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not a dumping ground
for occasional fresh market gluts.

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Although the food industry offers

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financial improvement and added security,

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Tar Heel farmers will not be able to
reap fantastic rewards from it

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as they sometimes do from produce buyers.

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The contracting processor,

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or the fresh produce buyer, 

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a choice that the food
producer considers carefully.

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Farmers who still take a lot of their
fancy produce to the open fresh market

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rather than to the more
stable market—the food processor.

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Here is FCX manager, Frank Tanner in Lumberton.

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Our chief problem down
here is developing and

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receiving from the farmers a quality, raw product

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which is necessary for us to fulfill
our orders and ship out to our markets.

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This winter we went up to the sandhills
section to see about a supply of peaches.

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While we were up to do the meeting,
one of the big growers after the meeting

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had developed for some time,
he said, "Mr. Tanner,

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we can adequately sell our
first quality merchandise.

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What we're interested in is
for you having our cull peaches."

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I said,

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"Gentlemen," I said, "the term
cull in our business means garbage."

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I said, "In other words, you want
us to be your garbage disposal."

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 I said, "No." I said, "We've got
to have just a finer quality

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to go in our cans as what can be attained."

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We can't improve it.

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So that means that we really have to have
an adequate, quality supply of raw material

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so that we can in turn turn
out a quality product.

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But Lumberton farmers,
like farmers everywhere,

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are rugged individualist used
to deciding their own crops and markets.

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One of the thorny problems in
establishing a processing business,

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is to recognize
its relationship with the supplying farmers.

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Contract farming is an agreement between

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the processor and the farmer,
whereby the processor guarantees a farmer

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a price, pre-stipulated price, for the raw
material the farmer is going to produce.

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The farmer, in turn,

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guarantees us as a processor
that he will deliver these,

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these vegetables to us
of a certain quantity at harvest time.

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That's good business and good farming,

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but it wasn't easy for Roy to get this
idea across to the farmers and done.

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Well the first two or three years that we were
here farmers were somewhat skeptical.

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Very difficult to get agreements
to grow produce for us.

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But since that time, farmers
have beginning to be more

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 dependent upon our contracts.

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They've accepted our contracts

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and our way of contract farming.

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Mr. Westbrook, these look like
some mighty fine peppers here.

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How is your crop this year?

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We have right nice crop.

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How have farmers
sold their crops in this area?

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Well we've grown cotton
and tobacco and vegetables.

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That's been our line for years.

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I'd say for years,

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thirty, forty years I reckon. 

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We used to do [?] truck farming.

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But we, at that time, we marketed
everything fresh, fresh vegetables.

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Why were you farmers so skeptical at first
about growing for a food processing plant?

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Why?

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 I think

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probably they
had gone some under contract.

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Probably they won't be,

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 didn't prove satisfaction and
they were a little bit [?] you might say

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of going into this, but I think
they're well figured now.

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Their previous experience
wasn't so good then, was it?

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No, no.

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That makes you a little bit more
skeptical, you know, to get into anything.

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It's a little bit—sometimes you
think twice before you [laughs].

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Well, what is a farmer's attitude now

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about growing under contract
in this region?

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Well, as long as the prices was
four dollars a bushel,

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why, we preferred the open market.

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But when they get down to
where they're a dollar a bushel

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why then they come back here to [?].

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Well, you come up here and
you sign your contract, you know

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then the price that you are going to get

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for that peppers when it's delivered here,
in good condition.

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Then it's up to you just to see
how much of that you can grow per acre,

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that means the
profit that you get out of it.

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You can concentrate all your efforts and energy
on growing it and growing the right quality and so on

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and let Mr. [?] over here worry about the market.

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The dairy industry,
unlike fruit and vegetable processing,

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is a year round activity offering
steady employment to contractors.

[00:13:05.380] 
It is one of North Carolina's
pioneer food industries,

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stretching back to the time when

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the state's people had to import, not only
milk, but many other foodstuffs.

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When most arable land was given
over to non-food cash crops

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dairying has made great strides
in gendering with its such allied industries

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as trucking and refrigeration.

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Using modern and efficient machinery,

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always applying the latest research,
it can now purify and liberate from [?]

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the raw product of milk and convert it
into a huge rack of consumer goods.

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No longer is there a dairy
deficit in Carolina.

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In dairying,

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North Carolina has growing at a rate
that even Wisconsin would envy.

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A twenty year success story

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increasing cash farm income
by sixty million dollars.

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Again, the attitude
of the individual farmers [?]

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as dairyman
Glenn [?] points out.

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We had an operation.

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We grew a lot of our own food.
We had various small farming enterprises—

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some tobacco, some poultry, some dairy,
but now times have changed.

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We no longer have the time, can afford
to take the time, to process our own food

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and do these small operations that we had.

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We now specialize in just one thing
which is dairy, which is our sole income

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and it is very important to us of course.

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We now have to depend on selling raw milk

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to our local dairy distributor
who processes this for the public.

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Of course,
our success depends on the success of our

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local dairy distributor and when he is
successful in making a profit

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 that reflects on our income.

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When he gets into financial trouble or

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due to price squeezes and competition,
that reflects on our income also.

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When my father started dairying

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we had approximately fifteen cows.

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We realized that today we could
not operate with fifteen cows.

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We have increased to approximately
four times that many.

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We have to be larger and more efficient.

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I think the key to success
now is efficiency.

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But if one farmer can specialize,

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so then can another farmer diversify,
try new enterprises, experiment

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and become his own food processor,

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like Lewis Upchurch of Raeford, North Carolina.

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A farmer with small beginnings,

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but big ideas.

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We decided to try
the fish farming enterprise. We

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got our information
from the southeastern part

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of the United States and we believe
it has real possibility within our area.

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But it is a thing that will probably

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come into its own in the next few
years, it's not right at the present.

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There is a big demand in the Midwest
for commercially dressed and packaged

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catfish of the channel variety,
not our native mudcat. 

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We feel that perhaps we can raise more
protein per acre through our ponds

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 than we can through our grassland.

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We are a general farm consisting

[00:16:37.280] 
of livestock, hogs, cattle,
grow crops, timber management.

[00:16:44.680] 
We have, only a little over a year ago,

[00:16:47.640] 
begun to process country cured hams here
on the farm.

[00:16:52.200] 
And we have approached this the same
with the idea that we would going into it

[00:16:57.480] 
in a limited manner and as a market,
or our particular market, grew

[00:17:02.040] 
we would expand as necessary.

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And we feel now that we are rapidly

[00:17:07.280] 
approaching the point where we would
desire to have federal inspection so

[00:17:12.160] 
that we can move out of North Carolina
and into an interstate market.

[00:17:17.160] 
We have diversified, or tried to diversify,

[00:17:19.920] 
our family farm enterprise
due to the fact that we feel we should

[00:17:24.840] 
spread our income out over more than
just the fall period of the year.

[00:17:30.800] 
Another such family enterprise,
which grew from humble beginnings

[00:17:34.880] 
on a farm in Alamance County centered
on pickles.

[00:17:39.960] 
Almost eighty years ago,

[00:17:40.320] 
Cates Pickles began with grandmother Cates'

[00:17:42.640] 
special Spring House recipe,
whose success caused the family

[00:17:46.640] 
to diversify operations and shift later
to [?] in the middle of North Carolina

[00:17:51.960] 
truck farming country,
where the cucumbers are.

[00:17:55.400] 
The vanguard of Cates' steady
and measured progress has been research.

[00:17:59.880] 
Work with North Carolina State
scientists has led to the discovery

[00:18:03.800] 
of superior techniques of processing
and preserving pickles.

[00:18:08.400] 
A. P. Cates has seen his company grow
into a million dollar business

[00:18:12.720] 
and has observed many refinements in food
processing techniques over the years.

[00:18:18.760] 
Some of the primary areas in which

[00:18:22.640] 
conditions are so much different now from what
they were when Cates Pickles were first manufactured

[00:18:28.720] 
is first the securing of raw materials,

[00:18:32.840] 
which were primarily
produced on the family farm

[00:18:37.040] 
 at the beginning of the

[00:18:39.960] 
 manufacturing of Cates Pickles.

[00:18:41.680] 
Now we are growing

[00:18:45.320] 
cucumbers for pickles on approximately
four thousand farms

[00:18:50.520] 
in South Carolina,
North Carolina, and Virginia,

[00:18:53.000] 
however, they are primarily
produced in North Carolina.

[00:18:56.120] 
Cucumbers are very easy to produce,
to grow, which can be done cheaply.

[00:19:01.320] 
However, the most difficult part is picking,

[00:19:04.000] 
and usually a crop has to be
picked twelve or fifteen times.

[00:19:08.960] 
Usually about three times
a week for four to five weeks.

[00:19:13.280] 
For Cates, the green season
is a frenzied harvest time

[00:19:17.040] 
when half a million bushels of cucumbers

[00:19:19.240] 
are gathered from five thousand
farmer contracted acres.

[00:19:23.120] 
Quite a change from the gay 90s,

[00:19:25.200] 
especially when the massive
harvest and processing begins.

[00:19:29.440] 
If new varieties and proper

[00:19:33.280] 
mechanical harvesting aids can be
successfully developed,

[00:19:37.640] 
it will probably mean that instead of one
and one half acres per producer

[00:19:42.440] 
that the producers of the future will produce
from fifty to seventy-five acres each.

[00:19:47.880] 
There will always be an opportunity
for the small food processor,

[00:19:52.520] 
as Cates once was,

[00:19:53.640] 
wherever there is an appetite or a need,

[00:19:56.560] 
but we have now entered the larger
stage of national markets.

[00:20:01.310] 
This means that vast corporations are

[00:20:03.360] 
turning their eyes to North Carolina—
[?], Swift's, Gordon's, and Gerber's.

[00:20:11.200] 
These big firms, once settled
in a new locale, do not stand alone.

[00:20:16.640] 
They depend on the cooperation
of local people.

[00:20:20.640] 
Manager John Erickson of Gerber's plant,

[00:20:23.320] 
high in the Appalachians
of western North Carolina.

[00:20:26.680] 
We believe that we have a very,
very fine relationship with the farmers.

[00:20:33.760] 
[audio skip] little afraid of us at first because it's my
understanding that there have been several,

[00:20:38.360] 
what I would call a fly by night processors,
that were here for one year and they

[00:20:42.460] 
contracted with the farmer,
but never lived up to the contract.

[00:20:45.760] 
So, I believe after they saw us
build this size building we've built,

[00:20:53.160] 
pouring several million dollars into it
and about equal amount of dollars

[00:20:57.800] 
into equipment, that they could see
that we were here to stay.

[00:21:02.320] 
And today, I believe we have the finest

[00:21:04.760] 
relationship with the farmers
that anybody could have.

[00:21:08.800] 
Many people have asked

[00:21:10.160] 
why we chose western North Carolina
for our plant site. There are many reasons.

[00:21:15.280] 
Probably the number one reason

[00:21:17.640] 
is the fact that we're close to our source
of supply of fruits and vegetables.

[00:21:23.400] 
Number two, we had to have
transportation to deliver the

[00:21:27.520] 
finished product to our customers

[00:21:29.160] 
and also have transportation
to bring it into our plant.

[00:21:33.880] 
We also needed a labor supply that

[00:21:37.160] 
there was plentiful and willing to put
out a day's work. Which, I might say,

[00:21:42.400] 
we're very satisfied with.

[00:21:44.960] 
We had have adequate water supply,

[00:21:47.360] 
it had to be plentiful and it had to be clean.

[00:21:51.080] 
We also needed, after using this water,

[00:21:54.710] 
we had to get rid of,
we had to have a waste disposal.

[00:21:57.560] 
And all these things were provided
in our location here in Asheville.

[00:22:03.280] 
Gerber's of Asheville pays out millions
of dollars annually for supplies

[00:22:07.200] 
and for farm products such as beans,
carrots, potatoes, squash,

[00:22:12.000] 
peas, apples, and peaches.

[00:22:14.760] 
Twenty million pounds of produce a year,

[00:22:17.840] 
 almost a thousand man labor force.

[00:22:21.160] 
Gerber's has indeed made
an impact on the Asheville area.

[00:22:25.800] 
That additional industry,
which a Gerber factory has fostered.

[00:22:30.040] 
Let's find out from one of its workers, that story.

[00:22:33.960] 
Pardon me, sir.

[00:22:35.720] 
Are you employed by another
food processing firm?

[00:22:38.520] 
No, sir.
This is no food processing plant.

[00:22:41.370] 
We make glass jars here.

[00:22:42.757] 
I and three hundred other people make

[00:22:46.200] 
jars for the processing plants that are
springing up in North Carolina.

[00:22:50.560] 
A new industry like food processing
is bound to create a big splash.

[00:22:55.360] 
Its economic influence ripples
out in every direction.

[00:22:59.000] 
Produce Processors Incorporated,

[00:23:01.720] 
PPI, as it's called, is a factory that
sprang up in [?], North Carolina

[00:23:07.400] 
soon after North Carolina State scientists saw

[00:23:09.480] 
the flaking of sweet potatoes
to make them more uniform,

[00:23:13.200] 
the result of food processing research.

[00:23:16.440] 
Now without that, taking this
raw sweet potato, converting it

[00:23:23.920] 
into instant yam or sweet potato
flakes, it would have been an impossibility.

[00:23:30.240] 
We would have never round
out our first product.

[00:23:33.520] 
Now we can take the sweet potato,
you take a number one sweet potato,

[00:23:38.480] 
there's still a market for it fresh.

[00:23:41.040] 
You don't need to process it.

[00:23:43.120] 
Where we can take the smaller potatoes,

[00:23:45.760] 
the larger potatoes, the
misshapen potatoes, the internal meat

[00:23:51.280] 
of that potato is still the same.

[00:23:53.600] 
When we take and flake it in our flaking
process and come up with it in the can

[00:24:00.000] 
I can't,

[00:24:00.640] 
and no one can tell, whether it came
from a pretty number one,

[00:24:04.480] 
whether it came from a two, or a jumbo, or what.

[00:24:07.320] 
In the food processing business today,
everything hinges on uniformity.

[00:24:14.720] 
We sell a man in January,
we sell him in June,

[00:24:15.360] 
he wants the same product both times.

[00:24:20.280] 
The nucleus for food research
is at North Carolina State.

[00:24:24.140] 
The twenty-five man Department of Food scientists
keep in close touch with a food farmer,

[00:24:28.240] 
the processor, and the consumer.

[00:24:31.160] 
Now our research scientists already have
many achievements to their credit.

[00:24:35.120] 
Their work, for example,
in cutting the curing time of country hams,

[00:24:39.120] 
removing all flavors from milk,
for longing the shelf life of [?] and eggs,

[00:24:44.160] 
producing sweet
potatoes into pumpkin flakes.

[00:24:47.440] 
Now we also have a
Department of Extension that provides

[00:24:50.640] 
information for those people
who are working in the field to keep them

[00:24:54.360] 
up to date, to keep them
modern and progressing.

[00:24:57.600] 
Also, we have a training
program that educates

[00:25:00.400] 
many young men and women to become leaders
and specialists in the food industry.

[00:25:07.320] 
Now in return, in the future with students

[00:25:08.720] 
at institutions like
North Carolina State College,

[00:25:12.160] 
they could send students
into the field, to us or anyone

[00:25:16.960] 
in the food processing business,
and those students could learn

[00:25:22.160] 
from industry what they
can't learn from textbooks.

[00:25:25.760] 
The last two summers we have sent one
of our young men out of our plant

[00:25:30.720] 
up to North Carolina State College
to work with Dr. Hoover

[00:25:35.040] 
in research on our product primarily.

[00:25:38.360] 
Now, this boy has come back, has learned
a lot and has been a help to us.

[00:25:42.440] 
I got out of high school
in 1960 and I worked for a year

[00:25:47.030] 
 and I started reading about
produce processors getting started and

[00:25:50.800] 
I became quite interested in it.

[00:25:53.680] 
And I came out and applied
for a job and I was hired.

[00:25:57.800] 
I worked one season with them and chance
came up for me to go to State College

[00:26:05.220] 
for the summer months and
worked with Dr. Hoover in his lab

[00:26:08.880] 
Our instruction program for [?] students
who want a career in the food industry

[00:26:13.040] 
to prepare themselves
with a university degree.

[00:26:17.080] 
We sketch the story of food processing
in North Carolina,

[00:26:20.960] 
a modern version
of a story as old as man himself.

[00:26:24.960] 
The best possible preparation
of his daily bread.

[00:26:28.240] 
 Food processing is not an easy industry.

[00:26:31.080] 
This mining of food from the soil,

[00:26:33.240] 
this [?] and readying of food

[00:26:35.080] 
for the market squares of
the nation and the world.

[00:26:40.840] 
Food processing is an industry that will
generate new markets, new jobs, new hope.

[00:26:47.760] 
It is a fresh chapter in the two hundred year old

[00:26:49.970] 
history of North Carolina's
agricultural way of life.

[00:26:52.520] 
[music]