Clip: Season 8 Episode 6 | 1m 22s | Video has closed captioning.
In the U.S., corn and soy are the top crop on farms because they are covered by federal insurance and therefore, protects farmers from a bad harvest. This leaves them little to no choice to grow other agricultural products needed in the country unless they are willing to financially bet on another crop like peas.
Aired: 03/25/24
Nicole Atchison: There's about, 85-90 million acres of corn and soy grown in the United Stat There's about 1 million acres of Patrick Miller: You know, there' huge markets everywhere for corn and soybean.
There's two spots in every town I can deliver my corn and soybea Amanda: Farming runs hand in han with a well-established and entrenched system known as the Federal Crop Insurance Pr U.S. farmers mostly grow corn an because those are the crops that get crop insurance.
The county that Dawson is in, Lac qui Parle County, doesn't have a policy for yellow field peas.
So, when Puris tries to convince to grow the pea here, they have to convince farmers to give up the safety net of crop insurance.
Patrick: It's nothing to spend a half a million dollars before anything comes out of the just to plant my farm.
Amanda: $500,000.
Patrick: If you don't have cover if you don't have guaranteed cov through crop insurance, you're never gonna get an operat -Amanda: But here's the M. Night Shyamalan twist.
Luke does grow peas, but not to sell to Puris for its plant proteins.
Luke: So after that wheat crop comes off, I'll plant 40 pounds of peas per I left all of the seed and every all of that protein goes back into the soil.
And that's one reason we have su healthy looking corn crop.
