Chip Carter digs deep inside the food industry to meet the people who have a passion for growing our crops and keeping the world fed…from the farms to the research labs to the offices where people make rules that regulate it all.  Along the way, he also looks into fascinating areas like agritourism, charcuterie-making and other off-the beaten path topics.

From field grown to heirloom to hothouse to custom-engineered. Tomatoes are America's second-favorite vegetable (even though they're technically a fruit, a berry in fact) behind only King Potato. But American growers are under intense pressure from foreign competitors. How will they survive? We'll wrap up with a scientist who has developed a new tomato variety that might just provide that answer.

From tasty snack to superfood, berries have taken over the food world. We spend a day with Florida berry giant Gary Wishnatzki (Wish Farms) and company, and also visit the University of Florida to find out why – and how -- berries have become such a big deal.

A South Carolina farmer does it like his ancestors did -- he and his family farm exactly the way his predecessors did 200 years ago, with the exact same seed stock and with the exact same methods on the exact same land. Watermelon, kale, okra, hemp, a wide variety of crops -- so far, the whole venture has been a wild success. Nat has also dedicated his life to reviving ancient crops on the edge of extinction, from pumpkins, gourds and maize grown by American indigenous peoples to the specific African peanuts and melons that were a sustenance crop for enslaved peoples before the American Civil War.

Most of the food we eat is still grown on conventional farms, but other ways are making an impact. Up first we’ll meet a firefighter who has turned a mushroom growing hobby into a $200,000 a year business... in his suburban garage. He’s been so successful he’s just purchased five acres in the country for a new farm and homestead.

We actually follow our mushroom farmer to an urban farm in the heart of St. Pete, FL that's partnering up with grocery stores to grow lettuce and microgreens in repurposed shipping containers in those stores' parking lots. Meanwhile, from its own downtown urban location, Brick Street Farms produces 45 acres worth of conventional produce... in a 1/3 acre lot!

Quick, how to you spell sweetpotato? If you think we just did it wrong, think again — that's the scientific way. And if you grow sweetpotatoes in North Carolina, that matters. And what North Carolina sweetpotato growers think matters because they grow more than two-thirds of the U.S. sweetpotato crop! How did one state become so dominant in a single industry? Believe it or not, tobacco played a role...

Tobacco was the crop that built not just North Carolina agriculture, but the entire state. It supported universities, hospitals and created opportunities for growth that have made North Carolina one of the fasted growing states in the nation. But as word spread about tobacco, that market went into a steep decline. Amazingly, sweetpotatoes like the same land, the same equipment, the same workers — it was a natural transition. So much so that today North Carolina grows over two-thirds of the U.S. sweetpotato crop!

We take oranges, grapefruit, lemons and limes for granted. They've been around our entire lives. They're always there when we want 'em. But did you have any idea that in just a few years they may all be gone? There's a lethal disease called citrus greening decimating Florida citrus. In the 20 years since it arrived, Florida has lost half its citrus land — some 500,000 acres of groves. Farmers are nothing if not ingenious. And adaptable. Some have found better ways to protect their fruit. Others have expanded into producing other commodities — like blueberries and peaches. We'll also take a side trip to Port Everglades, FL to try to do a little detective work as to how the bug that brought greening to America arrived — and to show the pivotal role our ports play in keeping us all fed. 

Citrus is an endangered species — Florida has already lost half its orange groves to a lethal citrus greening disease. In Part 2 of this episode, we'll meet a Frenchman who's devoted his life to saving the Florida grapefruit industry. You'll also see hundreds of acres of trees growing under cover in screened-in closure (like a giant back porch the size of several football fields). Florida growers have a choice: Stand and fight, quit, or adapt. We'll introduce you to people who've taken every path.

Where The Food Comes From doesn’t much matter if it doesn’t reach us... we'll examine the incredible network that moves food from the farm to our plates. Georgia Commissioner of Agriculture Gary Black gives us a tour of the Atlanta State Farmers Market – from there, we follow the trucks to a regional distributor on that market – and then head to Raleigh, NC to see how national grower and distributor the L&M Companies keeps track of more than 1000 trucks moving food across America.

There's always food growing somewhere in America. That's part of the real miracle of nature. Fruits and veggies are in full swing in Florida in the coldest months of the year — we start this episode in the Everglades in early February with our friends from L&M Farms. Then we roll up to Georgia in spring to visit Baker Farms, one of the largest growers of greens anywhere. Then we head for North Carolina in July to follow the crop as it continues marching north before starting all over again in Florida the next year.

The legendary Vidalia Onion might be the greatest accident in the history of agriculture. It's hard to imagine living without 'em now, but they actually didn't even exist until the 1930s. And it was another 50 years before the rest of us found out! In the 1930s, a farmer in Vidalia had a contract to deliver some regular onions. There was a late freeze that took out his crop. No more seedlings were available locally. Finally, he had a train car load shipped from Texas. But when the crop came up, the onions weren't hot... they were sweet! You know the rest of the story... or think you do. We'll tell you how that happened, show you how Vidalia onions grow and are harvested and -- bonus! -- host Chip Carter also introduces us to some of his favorite people in the world in his musical tribute to the region, "Sweet Vidalia".

In Part 1 of this episode, we found out that the legendary Vidalia Onion might be the greatest accident in the history of agriculture. Now it's time to meet some amazing farmers. Aries Haygood was 32-years-old and on top of the world. He'd just been named Vidalia Onion Grower of the Year — an honor usually reserved for his elder peers — when he got an earth-shattering medical diagnosis. Bo Herndon didn't come from a farming background. But he always knew what he wanted to do. He didn't have much help getting going — but he's certainly made the most of it since. John Shuman was away at college when he got a call telling him to come home. The family farm had gone bust. He'd planned to come back and join when he graduated. Now there was nothing left. Until he rebuilt it all.

Have you ever wondered how we're going to grow food on the moon? Or Mars? Or just find ways to reduce food miles and food waste here at home? All while producing more food with less land, less water and closer to the communities where we live and work? High-tech greenhouses are looking like the answer. Just a few acres of greenhouse space can produce more food than an entire conventional farm, with a fraction of the water and other inputs. We visited Red Sun Farm's Dublin, VA showcase to take a look at where farming is heading next.

They cut the ribbon on the sparkling new $140 million Steve Troxler North Carolina Department of Agricultural Science Center in March of this year. We stopped by a month later for a tour of what is likely the world's finest ag research facility, a five-acre campus that brings virtually all of the state's ag science departments under one roof. You'll be amazed how many things in this building touch your life every day, from the food you eat or feed your pets, to the medicine you take, to the clothes on your back and the gas or diesel in your vehicle, here's where they make sure it's all up to snuff. And it's also where they weight the official state lottery balls!

You think farming's hard now? You should have been there in 1870. Chip Carter found a time machine for a trip to the Georgia Museum of Agricultural on the campus of Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College in Tifton. It's a 400-acre living history exhibit where they still plow with mules, shear sheep for wool, distill turpentine, grind grain for meal, pound away at the blacksmith's forge, and make their own lumber with a very scary looking sawmill... which Chip broke. Among a few other things as he experienced what would have been a typical day for a farmer 150 years ago!

Chip Carter takes a time machine back to 1870 to spend a typical day working on the farm. And he's still tired. You would be, too, if you’d just wrapped up plowing behind a mule team, grinding grits, boiling down turpentine, and repairing the sawmill you just broke in the previous episode…

Across the country, farmers are working with groups like Feeding America to help avoid food waste and make sure people in need don’t do without. Food waste has become a big topic – Feeding America and its associates are the front line of defense.

The Society of St. Andrew has its origins in the Biblical story of Ruth, who “gleaned” fields with her mother. Gleaning is what happens when left-behind food is collected from a field post-harvest. The Society volunteers make sure that’s happening, gathering some of the shocking 40% of viable food that’s left behind after traditional harvests to share with those in need.

They call Georgia The Peach State, and with good reason. But it’s also home to a family farm and orchard that might just have been where “agritourism” was invented. Peaches, pecans and goodies aplenty – Lane Southern Orchards in Ft. Valley has it all.

The only problem with Vidalia Onions -- Georgia's trademarked crop -- is they're only available from April 'til September. When they first came to national prominence in the 1980s, that wasn't a problem. But people loved 'em so much they started asking for more and grocery stores wanted Vidalias year-round. But you can't fool Mother Nature. The Vidalia onion only grows one place on Earth, in the rich soils around Vidalia, GA. The search was on for a similar, suitable climate and soil mix that would produce a sweet onion that could be Vidalia's off-season cousin. They found the answer in Peru.

Most people have never been to a produce trade show. Most people don’t even know they exist! But this is where people who grow food by the ton meet up with people who buy it by the ton. The Southeast Produce Council is a member networking and service organization focused on the Southeastern industry — but that includes the countless other people around the nation and world who want to do farm business in or with the Southeast! It’s a spectacle of epic proportions — so much so that this SEPC Southern Exposure convention and expo in Orlando, FL this spring had a super-hero theme.

We pick this one up right where we left off -- with the big sprint to the finish at SEPC Southern Exposure! This is where the rubber meets the road – a 6-hour extravaganza of pitching and selling and shopping… and sampling, of course! Like alligator sous vide with a spicy mango salsa!?!

We previously showed you how North Carolina sweetpotato farmers do what they do -- which is grow an amazing two-thirds of the U.S. sweetpotato crop. But, as with all farmers, there's another side to show. Farmers are committed to serving and giving back to their communities. In this episode, Part 1, we'll follow the journeys of the amazing Ripe For Revival touring pantry that brings fresh produce into communities where it's needed most.

In part 2 of this very special episode, you'll meet a sweetpotato grower who -- like many -- does double duty with his volunteer fire department. You'll also meet a cancer survivor who speaks to the way the community supports each other in troubled times. We'll visit another grower who earmarks funds for cancer support. And most amazingly, we'll meet a former NFL star who walked away from the game to come home and farm and give away everything he grows to the needy.

In 2018, our Holiday special “Larry’s Tree: A Christmas Journey To The White House” began the march to Where The Food Comes From. We thought it was only fitting to go back and catch up with Mr. Smith and some of his amazing colleagues, like former NC State, Olympic and NBA basketball star Tommy Burleson who headed back home to grow Christmas trees himself.

Water buffalo are native to Asia -- so what are they doing on a farm in Salisbury, North Carolina? They're there to provide milk for traditional Italian buffala mozzarella cheese and super creamy gelato for Fading D Farms. Fading D Farms is up in the hills of Salisbury, NC, where typically no kind of buffalo roams. But the farm produces milk, meat, traditional Italian buffala mozzarella cheese and -- most amazingly -- gelato. Host Chip Carter started his day milking the first water buffalo he ever met at 7:30 a.m. By noon, he'd also helped make a batch of gelato... and then made off with his own stash.

If you're passing through Raleigh, NC (or even coming close) there's an amazing restaurant you need to know about. It's technically called The North Carolina State Farmers Market restaurant -- but folks around there just call it Gypsy's place. That's because Gypsy Gilliam, who's been in business there for over 20 years, is the lady behind the Market magic. Almost everything on the vast menu is North Carolina-grown. And most of what you're eating was sourced straight from the Farmers Market itself. Which is another wonder to behold. Most state terminal farmers markets are anything but public-friendly. They're industrial hubbubs that are a critical link in keeping us all fed. But the Raleigh State Market is a tourist attraction unto itself -- on every Top 10 List of things to do in Raleigh. We’ll show how it all comes together so spectacularly as a showcase for North Carolina Agriculture at Gypsy's Place.

There was a time you couldn't get on the wide open roads of America and not see a Stuckey's store. Loaded with treats beyond imagination that you just couldn't get anywhere else, Stuckey's quickly became an American icon after it launched in 1937. At the peak of the empire there were almost 400 stores coast-to-coast. But time marches on. Tastes change. Production was outsourced to Mexico. The Stuckey family lost control of the business. And the brand began to fade. Now a new generation is bringing it back. Granddaughter Stephanie Stuckey bought her family name back from the corporate world, moved headquarters and production back to tiny Wrens, GA, where it all started, and was smart enough to realize that, at heart, Stuckey's wasn't a snack company -- it was a pecan company with a lot of different ways to use the homefield advantage Georgia has as the nation's leading pecan producer.

We took you to the amazing North Carolina State Farmers Market and Restaurant in in an earlier episode, “Gypsy’s Place.” What you didn’t know then is that we had some very important guests joining us for lunch that day. Our goal was to show some of the support infrastructure it takes to keep farmers going. We all know it starts with a seed and winds up on our plate, but there are dozens, sometime hundreds of hands involved in the process. So we gathered a dozen or so leaders from the North Carolina agriculture world, representing farms, government and academia, to take a look at their roles in connecting the dots. But this is not just a North Carolina story. There are people just like this in your home state doing what they can to help keep you fed.

We hear a lot about the decline of the true family farm these days — it’s become a world of specialization and big agriculture. Even though most of those companies are still family owned, they’re not exactly the picture of a family farm we have in our minds. Meet the Gibbs Family. They live somewhere in central Georgia (even the GPS isn’t quite sure) and together grow peas, beans, watermelons, flowers, and even have 300 head of cattle (and their own store on-the-farm and another in a nearby town!) Mom and Dad Brooks and Eric have made sure their kids understand the value of hard work. The teenage girls, EllaGrace and LizzyRae, manage the cattle by themselves. And even 9-year-old Cotton Davis gives up morning cartoons to report to the barn by 7 a.m. and start the variety of tasks he has daily. It’s a refreshing look at the way America used to be — and the way parts of it still are today, whether people talk much about it or not.

Watermelon is grown around the world and in 44 U.S. states. It's one of the most popular global fruits. But year-in and year-out, tiny Cordele, GA is named Watermelon Capital of the World for the sweetness and volume of watermelon that flows from there -- there's even a giant state of a watermelon slice to welcome visitors -- along with a giant, decommissioned Titan missile that's visible from the interstate and draws travelers from all over as they pass on Interstate 75. The missile lures 'em in -- the watermelon makes them want to come back. We'll talk with some farmers and community leaders about how little Cordele has risen to such grand heights in the watermelon world.

We spend most of our time in the dirt and on the farm, and that won't change. But we wondered if our friends in the wild-caught seafood industry might deal with some of the same problems and challenges our farmer friends on land do. The answer? Oh yeah — and maybe then some. If you've ever been to Clearwater, FL, you've probably heard of Frenchy's — a half-dozen unique restaurants, all with a laid-back Florida feel and nothing but fresh seafood they catch themselves. The grouper sandwich sets the world standard. And stone crab season sets off an annual rush. Frenchy's success over the last few years has led them to go into the supply business as well — now they maintain their own fleet of boats to stock their own restaurants as well as the Frenchy's Seafood Company. It's a tasty story to be sure.

Millions of kids spent the first few years of their lives saying "Yuck" to broccoli. Pres. George Bush Sr. didn't like it either. But most of us grow up to find it quite tasty. And over the last few years, we've come to realize just what a nutritional powerhouse this flowery veggie is — along with its close cousins Brussels sprouts, cabbage and cauliflower. Their known as cruciferous vegetables, because they flower in the shape of a cross. But these days you could just substitute the word cruciferous with "super amazingly healthy." The crucifers have traditionally been West Coast crops, but over the last few years new varieties have been developed that can be grown almost anywhere. They're also some of the weirdest looking things you've ever seen coming out of the ground. In winter, the area around Palatka, FL is the crucifer capital of the U.S. We visited L&M Farms and Smith's Farm to find out more about how these tasty health helpers grow and are harvested.

Vidalia, GA is one of our favorite places to be. There’s something unique about being the only place in the world that can grow a particular crop. And of course we’re talking about the sweet Vidalia onion. They all come from about a 50 mile radius of a tiny town in Southeast Georgia.

The Vidalia onion is unique in all the world – and so are the people who grow it. We’ll meet some amazing farmers, all with tragedy to triumph stories that will leave you inspired. You’ll also see how onions are harvested, packed and made ready for your plate!

We import a lot of the food we eat. Fortunately for farmers, we export a lot, too. We think of endless lines of trucks streaming in across our southern border bringing in fruits and veggies from Central and South America, and that certainly happens. But for longer trips, larger loads, nothing beats shipping by sea. It's more economical and more ecologically friendly. It provides year-round supply of things we've now come to always expect at the supermarket — sweet onions, watermelon, citrus. And critically, it gives U.S. farmers expanded markets for their crops. It's also going on 365 days a year, 24 hours a day. Giant vessels packed with countless containers and the endless beep and whir of cranes, train cars rumbling, trucks coming and going. You'll be amazed at the impact a port has on agriculture — and vice versa. And we'll show how all that happens at Port of Savannah, one of the nation's oldest and its third-busiest. That's a lot of cargo — and it never stops

It's the oldest story we know -- the birds and the bees. We don't need the birds to grow our food, but without the bees we'd be in a lot of trouble. About a third of all crops require direct pollination by bees, including 70 of the top 100 primary sources of our food.  Take away the bees, you take away the food. There's a lot we don't understand about our flying friends -- but there's a whole lot more we're finding out. Where The Food Comes From spent a day with the experts at the University of Florida Institute of Food & Agricultural Sciences Honey Bee Research and Extension Lab to get the buzz. We'll dive deep to show you some of the very surprising ways bees impact what you eat -- and we'll also show you what's actually going on inside those hives!

We think of charcuterie as a brand new fad, but it's an art with roots in 15th Century France. Elegant arrays of fancy meats, cheeses, veggies and gnoshes that have become the centerpiece at many parties and gatherings. Like many ancient forms of food prep, its first goal was preservation -- spiced and/or smoked meats simply last longer and don't always need refrigeration. So for perfect charcuterie, you have to have a perfect source. We found one at Circle F Farms in Baxley, GA. Owned by the Folsom family, the farm consists of 2,100 acres and 400 head of Registered Brahman cattle. In addition to the elite Registered Brahman herd, Circle F raises heifers out of Hereford and Angus bulls. Circle F Farms was Woody Folsom's dream since childhood. Now his wife, Tamela, is making a different dream come true with the splendid Circle F Meats, also in Baxley. It's a 6,000 square foot showroom of a butcher shop and grocery, and charcuterie is key to making it all happen. We'll find out how it all comes together -- and get some lessons in putting together a perfect charcuterie platter ourselves!