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HATTIE: (Voiceover)
Bob's company, Sakata Farms, is one of the top 100 vegetable growers in the US.
He has hundreds of customers, including Safeway and Albertsons. Sir, we saw you
picking up corn.
Unidentified Man:
Yes.
HATTIE: Were you
picking certain ones?
Man: I was picking
the bigger ones, but you don't have to worry about the quality because it's all
good in the Sakata corn.
HATTIE: You're used
to it.
Man: Yes, I've had
it before.
BOB: When I started
the farm over 52 years ago, 26 percent of the population in the United States
were farmers. It took 26 percent of us to grow the food for everybody. Today
there is 1.8 percent, less than 2 percent.
HATTIE: One of the
efficiency decisions that you came with was that there ought to be one ear of
corn on one stalk.
BOB: Yes.
HATTIE: Talk to me
about that.
BOB: About 30 years
ago--35 years ago, I was asked to speak at a sweet corn breeders meeting and
there were really outstanding, large operators there. I was just a young kid
listening to their wisdom. And they wanted three ears per stalk that looked
green and a higher yield per acre. And when it came to me, I certainly didn't
want to argue with my successful colleagues, but I thought that I wanted a corn
plant that only produced one ear per stalk mainly because I could see the day
that we had to mechanically harvest our corn and it would be difficult to
design a machine that would harvest three ears off of a stalk. But one ear off
the stalk, I felt that I could help design a machine. Then you could increase
your plant population, also.
HATTIE: So you
started 35 years ago working on the product that you now have.
BOB: Correct. There
was a genetic engineer that was willing to help, and it took 20 years to come
up with this so-called supersweet variety that the whole industry has at this
point now.
HATTIE: You
invested your time, your energy, your money to test it and develop this and
work with this genetic engineer, but you don't own the seed?
BOB: No, I think
anything that would be an advantage to my colleagues in the business, why they
can have it, too.
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