'Food Machine' from 'America Revealed'--two videos I show my students

It looks like I'm not done with corn, even after Corn for fuel, a story I tell my studentsCorn questions from 'Food, Inc.' worksheet, and Discovery News on high-fructose corn syrup.  Here is another video about America's number one crop from PBS that I show my students: AMERICA REVEALED | The Key Ingredient of the US Food Machine | PBS.

Discover just how large a role corn plays in the American food machine.

That's not the only video from the series I include in my lectures.  Follow over the jump for another and links to where I've blogged about the rest.

Another clip from the episode I show my students is about the transformation of farming in Kansas into modern industrialized agriculture that my students viewed this week: AMERICA REVEALED | In Search of the Traditional Farm | PBS.

See a bird's eye view of hundreds of circular farm fields high above Kansas and join the search for the traditional farm in this clip from AMERICA REVEALED.

Note the importance of fertilizer and irrigation.  I constantly remind my students that synthetic fertilizer is the single most important factor in increasing food production.  The stat I pass along to my students is that fertilizers alone feed at least one billion people.  As for irrigation, the Ogalalla Aquifer plays a starring role in my lectures about groundwater and water use.

In case this show looks familiar to my readers, I've embedded videos from it in other entries, including the one about pizza delivery at the end of Space and astronomy news: Voyager, China, ice on the Moon, Mars landing, and more and the featured media Student sustainability video festival 6: Urban farming.  The students have seen all of these but the last one, which is an example of what I learn from my students.  They'll watch it first thing Tuesday.