From The Farm To Your Plate: Here’s The Steps To Food Manufacturing

landscape of farm

Ever heard of Johnny Appleseed? He’s an American folklore character who went around planting apple seeds wherever he wanted.

You could say he was the father of food manufacturing, in that he planted things where they don’t naturally grow.

And not everything at your local grocery store was planted where it naturally grows either – farmers have some tricky methods for making things store-ripe.

Want to learn more about how things go from ground to grocery store? Read on.

Step 1: Growing on the Farm

Commercial planting and growing aren’t as simple as it is in your backyard garden. When you’re planning on that large of a scale, big machines are involved.

There are machines for everything from putting the holes in the ground to putting seeds in the holes. Farmers usually get grants from the government to buy these machines, or they share them with nearby growers.

Once the seeds are in the ground, the farmer has to wait for the food to ripen. On a lot of farms, they need to spray with pesticides, which aren’t always as harmful as the media makes you think.

The food on the vine is subject to the weather, bugs, and any animals that may want a tasty bite. Some farmers use falcons that will fly over the field and scare any hungry birds.

Once the farmer gets their crop to the point where it’s harvest-ready, they’ll take out a new kind of machine. Some crops, like wheat, are easier to harvest than others.

Delicate crops like tomatoes have to be handpicked, so they don’t get squashed in the machinery.

With the crop gathered, the farmer takes it into some sort of cleaning or paring facility, where the leaves and stalks are removed from the item.

Unless you buy them fresh, you’d never know that Brussel sprouts grow on a stalk – this is the step where farmers package up their goods and send them to processing.

Step 2: Processing

It depends on what the farmer is growing, whether they’ll process it in house or not. If they’re selling crops as produce, then they’ll usually process the food themselves.

That means cutting off the leaves (like we said) sorting through the bunch to throw out any ugly or defective products, then washing them all.

Once everything is store-ready looking, then the farmers package them however they choose. Sometimes we see them use large crates, which the grocery stores will receive and then display as they please.

Other times they’ll put their produce into packages, like the bags you buy grapes in.

Some crops have special types of boxes, to ensure the crop stays healthy during travel. Apple boxes, for example, have little indents where individual fruits rest.

Banana boxes, on the other hand, have two different ventilation systems – holes on both the bottom and the side of the box.

Food Manufacturing or Processing, Pt. 2

There are plenty of farmers who work for companies, that use their crops as ingredients. They don’t have to be as particular when choosing pretty crops for this purpose.

Instead of wrapping things up individually, these farmers pack their produce in crates and ship them off to whatever factory.

What kind of factory? Well, that depends on the crop. Most of the time the factory setup has some sort of cleaning process as the first step.

After cleaning, the real part of the food processing begins. The raw crop will be sliced into size, cooked, and combined with the other ingredients.

The finished product is then packaged, labeled, and loaded onto trucks. The trucks take the product to grocery stores or to restaurants – or to distribution companies, which handle the final details.

Speaking of restaurants, want to know who is the biggest buyer of potatoes in the world? It’s McDonald’s. Gotta have those fries!

Step 3: Transport

Once upon a time, a long time ago, you could only buy produce that was in season. Now you can get summer fruits, like peaches, at the beginning of February.

Why? Because we now have the ability to transport crops across climates. The growing season for peaches may be February in one part of the world, while it’s more like May in most of the United States.

So how does a Brazilian peach get to a US grocery store? On a ship or a plane, then on a truck. But people have to be really careful about when they pick the fruit so they don’t arrive overripe.

In some instances, farmers will pick the fruit before it’s ready so it can ripen on the journey.

If it’s truly not ripe, there are injections that the transporters can put into the fruit that chemically ripen them. It’s all very scientific.

That whole process isn’t good for your wallet – that’s why out of season produce is so expensive. It’s also not good for the earth. All that transportation uses up precious resources, that aren’t really necessary.

To save the earth and your wallet, find out the growing seasons in your state – then buy the relevant produce.

If you don’t want to do your homework, you don’t have to. You can tell what’s in season by the prices and availability at your local grocery store. The more in season it is, the cheaper it’ll be.

The Saga of Food Manufacturing

From farm to grocery store to your table – it’s a long journey. Learning about food manufacturing makes us grateful that we don’t have to grow our own food any longer. While it can be bad for the earth, sometimes it’s nice to find a ripe pineapple for a cake you’re making in November.

We’re lucky to have such a large array of food available to us, but we also need to be responsible. Shop locally when you can and buy things in season.

Want to cut down on your grocery-store dependence? Learn how to grow plants inside with these tips.

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