User Reviews

WHAT A BAD SHORT!!! Thank got Mystery Science Theater got a hold of this and made it hilarious. It is an 11 minute piece of crap about farming during the depression and other fruit-picking stuff like that...It should be on one of the shorts tapes for MST3k, or it's definitely on "I Accuse My Parents"

Prepare to be put to sleep as you are going to be introduced to the wonderful world of the truck farmer. Shorts like this make other shorts dealing with subjects such as posture, cheating and juvenile delinquency seem like a ton of fun. This one covers how food is brought to your table as the new technology that helps ship produce and keep it fresh is exposed as is the fact that even back in the 1950's farmers used illegal immigrants as a cheap source of labor. Jobs Americans would not do? You bet, especially when paid what amounts to slave wages. Amazingly though Americans will work in a factory or warehouse under the most brutal of conditions if decent wages and benefits are provided. Off my soapbox now as you will see nothing here that is all that fun to watch. Why they felt the need to make such shorts back then is beyond me, my guess is that there is a paint drying short made back then too. Seems like going to the movie was a gamble when it came to shorts. You could see a Bugs Bunny cartoon, a three stooges short or you could see a short telling you the wonders of phones or watch a short documentary on truck farming. My guess is they put the good shorts with the good movies and the bad short with the bad movies. That way no matter how bad the movie, it will be positively wondrous when compared to the short that preceded it.

An interesting little short about the exploitative system of the 1930's-50's that used cheap Mexican workers (that "cross the border on temporary work permits to *help* with the harvest"). Between the excessive chemicals and the water hose (that will later be used to beat back the workers), there's no end to the laughs when MST:3K features this before "I Accuse my Parents." Great lines abound, such as "A preteen is put to work. Her Beauty will soon fade" and "It's Killdozer! Clint Walker, no!"

It's a movie about how the pioneers crossed the plains to California so they could raise vegetables, although we get to look at a carrot farm in Texas.

It's another of the dull educational films produced under the aegis of the Encyclopedia Britainnica, with pictures arranged in neatly chosen order, and a dull, droning narrator reciting banal facts.

I don't imagine the subject could be made much more interesting -- the comments of the Mystery Science 3000 crew didn't help -- but there you have it. What is mildly surprising is the original concept: that people need to be told that carrots come from farms, and farmers work hard. Children may be ignorant, but educators are dmb.

If you aren't up for a snapshot of the old version of America's supply chain, food-wise.

MST3K articulates points, as well as well-aimed barbs, about how everyone gets year-round vegetables. Not everyone *today* is conversant about what grows in what season, so highlighting the work that folks in the 50s did was good. (If you run/work at a community or neighborhood garden? Much respect for your efforts.)

If I was a history or science teacher, I'd use this as a jumping off point for discussions.

Not a terrible short, but better with MST3K.