In India they're using a Bollywood star to promote their products. In America...

EXCERPTS: "Heartland" has a two-year financial commitment, station officials said, from the powerful voice of the nation's farming establishment, the American Farm Bureau Federation, and St. Louis-based agribusiness giant Monsanto Co.

Though the station retains rights to select its stories, it consults with a national advisory board that includes groups like the National Corn Growers Association, National Cattlemen's Beef Association and International Food Information Council, a Washington industry group that promotes genetically modified crops along with food safety and nutrition research. Former U.S. Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman of Modesto has also helped introduce the new national show by talking up "a tremendous amount of viewers" for the California version.

for more on International Food Information Council: http://www.gmwatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=64

for more on the National Corn Growers Association:
http://www.gmwatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=96

for more on the American Farm Bureau Federation:
http://www.gmwatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=267

for more on Monsanto:
http://www.gmwatch.org/p1temp.asp?pid=25&page=1
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Farm show goes national
By Jim Wasserman -- Bee Staff Writer
Sacramento Bee, June 13, 2005

For nine years a KVIE public TV team roamed California's 27 million acres of farmland, its kitchens, farmers markets and big city restaurants to bring one of the state's leading agricultural TV shows to a largely urban audience.

But seven months ago the Sacramento-based station retired "California Heartland" after 1,000 stories of making ice cream, growing Golden State boysenberries and profiling celebrity food figures from TV chef Julia Child to wine mogul Robert Mondavi.

It was hardly the end. The distinctive California farm show, retooled and packing a new 20-show budget of more than $1 million a season, is going national.

Sacramento's KVIE has scheduled "America's Heartland" to begin airing throughout the United States in September. The aim is to repeat the program's long run in California by roving across the nation's 2.1 million farms, "from the rolling fields of the Midwest to the rough and ready ranches of the High Plains, from the citrus groves of the Deep South to the fishing fleets of the Far West," as its promotional video to 305 U.S. public TV licensees attests.

Having built its California audience with a typically cheerful tone and general avoidance of controversies underlying the state's food supply, the new national "Heartland" has a two-year financial commitment, station officials said, from the powerful voice of the nation's farming establishment, the American Farm Bureau Federation, and St. Louis-based agribusiness giant Monsanto Co.

Both sponsors decline, as does KVIE, to say how much they're spending. But the investment is significant.

"It takes seven figures to produce a show like this," said Jan Tilmon, KVIE vice president for content and a creator of "California Heartland."

Don Lipton, spokesman for the Washington-based Farm Bureau, said: "We're after an urban audience and it's very hard to reach that audience with a traditional media. Public TV has a very respected brand and a very respected audience. ... That's one ag groups would be struggling to reach."

With less than 2 percent of the nation's population earning a living from farm jobs and no national TV series consistently telling farmers' and ranchers' stories, agricultural officials have long been in search of programming that reaches a broader audience.

"The sector as a whole feels undercovered and not adequately represented in today's media," Lipton said.

Already, KVIE video crews and longtime "California Heartland" reporter Pat McConahay have been to 10 states, chronicling winter's maple syrup harvest in Vermont, reporting on shrimping along the Gulf Coast and profiling Maker's Mark, a small Kentucky-based bourbon distillery. Other first-season stories completed or in the works include a Mitchell, S.D., tourist attraction, the Corn Palace with its murals made of grain, and a revival of the Texas sugar cane industry for cancer research. Another Texas segment profiles a family growing aloe vera, symbolizing Texas' status as the nation's leading aloe producer.

Such choices reflect the series' traditional gravitation toward the lifestyles of family operations and stories of "people with sweat on their brows and calluses on their hands."

"There really is a tradition of myth of farmers as embodying all the traits we like as a nation: perseverance, hard work and entrepreneurship," said the show's executive producer, Mike Sanford.

Federal statistics indicate that small family farms earning less than $250,000 a year still dominate the U.S. landscape. But 68 percent of agricultural production now comes from the 8 percent of farms classified as "large and very large family farms" and corporate farms, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Though the station retains rights to select its stories, it consults with a national advisory board that includes groups like the National Corn Growers Association, National Cattlemen's Beef Association and International Food Information Council, a Washington industry group that promotes genetically modified crops along with food safety and nutrition research. Former U.S. Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman of Modesto has also helped introduce the new national show by talking up "a tremendous amount of viewers" for the California version.

At Monsanto Co., U.S. director of grower outreach Julie Doane said, "We obviously watched tons of shows before we elevated this internally." She called the company's eventual sponsorship a "natural fit."

"It's a great opportunity for all of us to get reacquainted with where our food comes from, the clothes we wear, the roofs over our heads and now even the fuel in our gas tanks, with ethanol," Doane said.

As KVIE officials wrestle with selecting a host and a permanent reporting team, they don't know how many U.S. stations will carry the show.

"Public television is not an Indianapolis 500 start," said director of program marketing Jim O'Donnell. "This will premiere and will probably take literally months to start on all the stations."