Inside the World's Most Advanced Mega Farms — Thousands of Agricultural Machines Working Nonstop ►2

On huge farms that cover hundreds of hectares, every harvest season is a race against the clock. Thousands of tons of crops have to be picked, shipped, and processed non-stop. In this video, we'll follow that journey from the field all the way to the modern production line. We start our journey in Michigan, one of the most important places in the U.S. for growing cucumbers. Cucumber harvest season here usually runs from July to September. During this time, Farms use modern high-power harvesters to speed up work in fields that cover hundreds of hectares. As the machine moves along the row, the pickup part at the front lifts the cucumber vines off the ground and pulls them inside. Inside, the machine removes the stems and leaves and sorts the cucumbers. The ones that meet the standard move onto a conveyor belt at the back. Unlike potato harvesters, which dig into the soil, cucumber harvesters are built to handle the vines and fruit on top of the ground. Thanks to the way the pickup part is designed, the machine bruises very few cucumbers. It can harvest about 5 to 10 tons per hour. Even as technology keeps improving, hand labor still can't be fully replaced. Picking by hand is up to 15 times slower than using a machine, but it has the advantage of being careful and precise. Workers pick cucumbers one by one. choosing the ones that are the right size and ripeness and place them on a conveyor belt attached to a trailer the belt carries the cucumbers to a bin so workers don't have to carry them after they are collected the cucumbers are trucked to the factory within two to four hours this short trip helps keep them fresh and crunchy and keeps their natural texture so they are ready to be made into pickles at the factory the first step is washing the cucumbers are dumped straight from the trucks into large water tanks with a circulation system the water in the tanks keeps moving and is treated with ozone or diluted chlorine to help clean the cucumbers the gentle current washes away dirt sand and other junk and carries the cucumbers onto a conveyor belt without bruising them next the cucumbers pass through a high pressure water spray about four to six bars to remove any dirt left behind this water is then filtered disinfected and sent back into the line which saves a lot of water after the cucumbers are washed and sorted they can be made into pickles in two ways the traditional way by letting them ferment naturally or by soaking them in vinegar in the natural fermentation method The cucumbers are moved into big tanks and soaked in a mix of salt water and pre-mixed spices. The temperature of the room helps the fermentation happen. After about one to four weeks, the cucumbers slowly develop their sour taste and special smell. When fermentation is done, the cucumbers are moved from the tanks to a processing line where they are washed again, checked, and any bad ones are thrown out. In the last step, The pickles are packed into jars along with salt water made from the company's own recipe. The product may then be heat treated to keep its quality steady before it goes to stores. Instead of waiting weeks for natural fermentation, factories can use the vinegar method, which cuts the time down to just a few hours and makes it possible to produce large amounts. First, spices such as garlic, dill, and pepper are put into the jars. Then a machine automatically places the cucumbers into each glass jar, and the jars move on to the step where the pickling liquid is poured in. In this method, vinegar is what makes the cucumbers sour, so there is no need to ferment them for weeks. With the right packaging, the product can be stored for a long time. After the jars are filled and capped, they go into a continuous pasteurizing system. The temperature inside the chamber is carefully controlled to kill germs and make the pickles last longer. When they come out of the chamber, the jars are cooled right away with water spray and fans. Cooling them quickly keeps the pickles from going soft from leftover heat, so they stay crunchy and high quality. Finally, the jars of pickles pass through an automatic labeling system, which adds the product information before they are shipped to stores. Every year, Michigan produces about 190,000 to 240,000 tons of cucumbers for pickling, which is almost one-third of all the cucumbers grown for pickling in the U.S. This makes it one of the most important sources of raw material for the pickle industry. From Michigan to wherever you are, tell us what the weather is like today. Every fall, German farmers harvest more than 55 billion pounds of sugar beets. Almost all of the white sugar made in Germany comes from this one crop. The journey from the field to the factory has several stages. Lifting, piling at the field edge, loading, quality testing, and finally processing in sugar factories that run around the clock for the entire campaign. Sugar beets build up sugar the fastest in late summer and early fall. If farmers harvest too early, the sugar level hasn't reached its peak yet. If they wait too long, the fields have to deal with long periods of rain and frost. That's why every farm's harvest schedule is carefully planned together with the local sugar factory. When the time is right, huge harvesting machines roll into the field, working on six rows at once. At the front, sharp blades cut off the leaves and the tops of the beets. Right behind them, the lifting parts pull the beets out of the ground and send them over spinning rollers that shake off the loose dirt. The machine keeps moving forward without stopping, pulling up thousands of beets every minute. Fall weather in Germany is often hard to predict. Rain makes the soil heavy and sticky, so the beets carry more mud with them. A fully loaded harvester can weigh more than 130,000 pounds. And if the ground is too wet, all that weight can press the soil down hard and hurt next year's crop. Giant tires and a special crab steering mode, which keeps the front and back wheels from rolling over the same track, helps spread out the pressure. But even they can't beat the weather. If the forecast says heavy rain is coming tomorrow, do you push to harvest today even though the ground is already wet, or would you wait and take the risk of frost? And sometimes, winter shows up earlier than expected. On the last fields of the season, harvesters have to work in the snow, racing against ground that is slowly freezing. At this point, every day of delay could leave hundreds of tons of beets frozen solid right under the surface. The beets don't go straight to the factory. Instead, they're dumped into long piles, hundreds of feet long along the edge of the field, where they wait for delivery day. When the weather turns cold, the piles are covered with a special fabric to protect them from frost because beets that freeze and then thaw go bad very quickly and lose their sugar. When the factory is ready to take them, a special loading machine moves slowly along the beet pile. The wide pickup table at the front keeps pulling the beets in. Spinning rollers clean off the dirt one more time, and then a long conveyor arm drops the beets straight into the back of a truck. This truck carries about 55,000 pounds. During the busiest weeks, long lines of trucks drive to the factory all day and all night. The factory gate weight isn't everything. An automatic sampling tube pushes down into the truck and pulls out some beets to be tested. The sample is washed to find out how much dirt and other material came along with it. Then the sugar level is measured, And it's usually around 17 to 18%. Farmers get paid based on the weight of the clean beets and the real amount of sugar inside them. Next, the truck pulls into the unloading area. Above it, a large water cannon on a turning stand starts up. A powerful stream of water blasts straight into the load, washing the beets out of the truck layer by layer and pushing them down into a water channel below. In just a few minutes, tens of thousands of pounds of beets are unloaded and the mud from the field is washed away at the same time. Beets are washed clean and then cut into thin strips called cassettes. Inside the diffusion tower, hot water at about 160 degrees Fahrenheit pulls the sugar out of the cassettes. The raw juice is purified with milk of lime and carbon dioxide, thickened through several evaporation stages, and then boiled in vacuum pans until sugar crystals start to form. Centrifuges separate the crystals from the syrup. Then the sugar is dried and moved into silos ready to be packed. Nothing goes to waste. The beet pulp leftover after the sugar is removed gets pressed. In pellet form, the pulp is easy to store and can be shipped very long distances. It's a high energy feed that's easy to digest and it's especially good for dairy cows and beef cattle. From shape and size to color, radishes come in Many kinds. In the United States, red radishes are the most common. They are easy to spot, small and round, with a red skin around a white, crunchy inside. To deal with the huge amount of radishes at every harvest, American farmers don't only rely on hand labor. They also use special harvesting machines that save time and keep the quality of the radishes high. In the field, the machine uses a special part to loosen the radishes and lift them out of the ground. Then they move onto a conveyor belt, where the dirt on the outside is shaken off. The best thing about a radish harvester is that it works fast, but still handles the produce gently. In just a few hours, a machine can harvest many acres, with very few radishes getting bruised or broken. In greenhouses, where growing conditions are tightly controlled, big harvesters often can't move between the rows. So smaller machines are used to pick the radishes more accurately. To protect the radishes, the machines have soft conveyor belts and padded bins to cut down on bumps. Some machines can also be adjusted to fit the size of the radishes and how much they have grown. On small farms or farms that grow special kinds of radishes, people still harvest by hand. Farmers pick the radishes row by row. They gently pull each one out of the ground, brush off the dirt, and check the quality before gathering them. Even though it takes a lot of workers, hand harvesting lets farmers choose the radishes more carefully. The good ones are tied in bunches to sell at markets, and the rest are sent off to be processed. Whether it's done by hand or with modern machines, being careful always matters. The goal is for the radishes to keep their shape, freshness, and crunch until they reach customers. After the radishes are trucked to the plant, the ones still covered in dirt go onto a cleaning line. There, high pressure water spray and soft brushes remove the dirt without hurting the skin. Some lines add a step using ozone water or a mild disinfectant. This cleans better, cuts down the bacteria on the surface, and helps keep the radishes crunchy. After washing, the radishes are sorted by size and quality. The even ones that meet the standard are packed to sell, and the others are used as ingredients for processed foods. The last step, is packing the radishes in ways that fit each market. This protects the product and also makes storage, shipping, and delivery easier. Radishes sold in stores are usually packed in bags with air holes to keep them fresh and stop moisture from building up. Meanwhile, radishes for restaurants and food processors come in big boxes. Every package has a label that clearly shows the type of radish where it came from, and any certifications, so shoppers can easily find the product information. Napa cabbage is a common vegetable in kitchens around the world, known for its natural sweetness and high water content. Picking time matters a lot for Napa cabbage. If it is picked too early, the heads are loose, light, and not sweet enough. If it stays in the field too long, the heads can crack, the leaves can change color, and the taste can suffer. In the green fields, farmers bend down and cut each head at the base with a sharp knife. Old, yellow, or damaged outer leaves are removed, then the cabbage is gently placed in crates, with only a few layers stacked so it does not get bruised. On farms that sell fresh vegetables, the cabbage is taken right away to a packing station in the field. This cuts down waiting time and keeps the cabbage fresh before it goes out to stores. To harvest large fields, many farms now use special machines. With the right cutting and collecting system, a machine can keep working non-stop and still avoid bruising the cabbage. This speeds up the harvest, saves on workers, and works well for large-scale farming. Once the harvest is done, the Napa cabbage is gathered up and sent straight to the kimchi factory for the next steps in processing. In the first work area, Boxes of fresh cabbage weighing about 44 pounds are received and moved by robot arms. Using these machines means less heavy lifting and makes receiving the cabbage easier. Workers place the cabbage on a conveyor belt one by one, and it moves to a spot where each head is cut exactly in half. The halves then ride the belt to the salting area. The halves are placed in rectangular tanks that each hold about four tons. With 10 tanks in all, the factory can handle about 40 tons at the same time. Once the tanks are full, workers set large metal plates on top to hold the cabbage in place. This keeps the cabbage under the salt water the whole time it soaks. While the cabbage is soaking, other ingredients like broth, fermented fish sauce, and chili powder are mixed using a special recipe. The fish sauce is heated first to control germs and keep the food safe. When the soaking is done, workers move the cabbage to the trimming area to cut off the core, the old leaves, and any parts that are not good enough. Then machines wash the cabbage four times in a row to remove dirt and anything else stuck on the leaves. For an even deeper clean, workers also wash the cabbage by hand, dipping it in water and shaking it gently. Then the cabbage is left to drain, which gets rid of extra water between the leaves so the seasoning does not get watery later. Process continues in the seasoning room, which has the most workers on the line. 그사이김치맛이변하지않도록 An automatic system adds the seasoning at set amounts, starting so every piece gets the same amount. Workers spread the seasoning by hand onto each layer of leaves, to taking extra care with the parts deep inside. speak When the cabbage is fully coated, it rides the belt to the packing area. now. The finished kimchi is vacuum sealed and kept cold. This slows down fermentation and keeps the flavor steady while it is stored and shipped. From the field to the factory, every product is made with both technology and hard work from people. Which step in the process stood out to you the most? Leave a comment below, and don't forget to like and subscribe so you don't miss our next videos about how things are made. Thanks for watching, and see you next time.