By DIONNE BERTLING
St. Joseph Post
Mike Rowe, the narrator of the TV show, "How America Works," features St. Joseph's Lifeline Foods in an episode that aired last week on the Fox Business Channel. The episode highlights how vital corn farmers and processors are to the rest of the country.
Rowe describes a childhood job of detasseling corn, he said it wasn't the best corn related job that he's ever had. "His best job would be narrating this episode of "How America Works" because he gets to introduce a few of the men and women who are directly responsible for processing over 100,000 tons of corn every single day."
"Corn is our nation's largest crop, so it is safe to say that the U.S. grows a lot of it," Rowe asks, " Just how much are we talking about? Lately, that's just shy of 400 million tons a year, or if we are talking ears of corn, enough to wrap end to end around the earth, five times."
"Every year U.S. farmers plant and harvest an area roughly the size of Montana exclusively with corn. It is then up to 40 corn mills scattered across the country to turn those raw kernals into consumable product," Rowe says. "Mills, like Lifeline Foods in St. Joseph, Missouri, here a team of nearly 200 employees labor day in and day out to create a wide variety of meals, grits and flours used in everything from tortilla chips to beer."
Rowe showcases several of Lifeline's workers- Kyle Mann- Director of Milling Ops, Tom Hayden- Head Fabricator and Andrew Axmacher- Masa Ops Lead. Rowe also has a local corn farmer on the show.
In an interview with KFEQ, Ryan Swafford, Lifeline's Marketing Administrator, talks about who the farmer is, "John Schenkel, who owns Schenkel farms near Maryville, Missouri."
Mike Rowe shows just some of the obstacles that both Lifeline employees and farmer John Schenkel have to overcome to get the corn products ready.
Rowe concludes the show by showing corn farmer John Schenkel making it to Lifeline, just in time. According to John Schenkel, "It takes about 15 minutes to load the corn, and about 30 seconds to unload. It goes out a lot faster than it goes in."
The episode is available to view online and can be found HERE.