I'm here to talk about this educational short but as it's a dry one, and there's an MTS3K of it, I'm giving you that one.
Anyway, I find this short fascinating. It's all about how being able to eat food from far away is neat and you should be excited to do it, basically.
A few notes of particular interest:
The first version of this short (which I've never seen) was from 1939; this one is from 1954. While I don't have the full history of WHY this short was made, both of those timestamps are interesting. In 1939, as the US was coming out of the Depression, it's likely a lot of people were getting food sourced from unknown places for the first time in their lives, and an educational short like this (that likely played at the movies before the main feature) would have explained to them what was up. The fact it was updated in 1954 is also interesting. We were well out of rationing by that point, but I think maybe it was updated because a lot of people were moving from rural areas to industrial areas for work opportunities, and a lot of farm people who'd always known where their food came from suddenly didn't know.
While I can't say what was or wasn't updated between the two editions, the riff of "Did people really need to be convinced about cars at this point?" does a great job finding a spot where an update SHOULD have happened. Not just because my 1954 the US was well into car culture but also because the truck that drives by is clearly pre-war (split windshield is usually a good indicator).
I also think the update was done to focus on how the food stayed fresh during travel because the refrigerated truck only came into being after WW2, so likely this was a push to assure people the food was safe in them.
The implicit acceptance of using migrant workers for harvest is fascinating as someone who has basically always lived in a "they took the jobs!" era of how some people look at migrant labor. Here, it's just stated as what you do to get your crops picked.
The opening narration that just full-out wiped out the fact that pioneer families spent all spring and summer canning so they could have veggies in the winter is just an amazing thing to try and re-write history on. A shit ton of people were still home-canning every season in 1954. To have been in the theater to see first reactions from farm kids hearing that pioneers didn't have winter veggies would have probably been funny.
Anyway, I just find this video interesting, and the MST3K gang do their usual good work, so I hope you had fun with my ramblings.
