Follow wheat berries from field to grain elevator as migrant laborers use a combine to harvest the crop
Combines harvesting wheat in South Dakota
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Transcript
NARRATOR: Combines are complex farm machines used to harvest wheat and many other crops.
When wheat is ready for harvest, migrant laborers like Erin Gillie and her family go to work, helping farmers from Texas to Canada.
These wheat fields are in South Dakota. The combine can be considered a factory on wheels, because it combines three major tasks at once. It cuts the wheat stalks, then separates out the wheat berries and stores them. It then tosses back the stalks for other machines to pick up and bale into hay.
The harvesters work efficiently. They rarely stop, not even to unload their grain. Trucks follow the combines to receive the grain while the combines continue working.
The trucks then take their loads to the grain elevators, and the combines and their drivers keep right on harvesting.
At the grain elevators, the wheat berries are tested and stored.
Soon the grain is loaded into trains to be sent around the world.
When wheat is ready for harvest, migrant laborers like Erin Gillie and her family go to work, helping farmers from Texas to Canada.
These wheat fields are in South Dakota. The combine can be considered a factory on wheels, because it combines three major tasks at once. It cuts the wheat stalks, then separates out the wheat berries and stores them. It then tosses back the stalks for other machines to pick up and bale into hay.
The harvesters work efficiently. They rarely stop, not even to unload their grain. Trucks follow the combines to receive the grain while the combines continue working.
The trucks then take their loads to the grain elevators, and the combines and their drivers keep right on harvesting.
At the grain elevators, the wheat berries are tested and stored.
Soon the grain is loaded into trains to be sent around the world.
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