This is a 1950s era, color movie called, Today in the Beet Fields of Europe. Produced by The Beet Sugar Development Foundation out of Fort Collins Colorado, U.S.A. The film features Americans in Europe testing out various equipment for farming beets. The film opens with a man pointing to a globe with a pencil :38. He points to the northern European countries where an expedition will be made to discover more about beet production in that region. Aerial view of New York City 1:20. B-36 Army bomber flies overhead 1:39. LaGuardia Field tarmac 1:55. Plane lands in Britain at Heathrow airport 2:23. Double-decker buses in downtown London 2:32. The Rothamsted Experimental Station is the oldest agricultural research facility in the world. In Harpenden, Sir John Lawes founded the facility and the School there is named after him. 2:50 A field is shown were manure experiments were conducted 3:00. A “destroyer” machine was used to till the fields. John Deere model number 54 3:36. Barley is placed under a shed 3:55. Catchpole single-row harvester, tills the field 4:04. Beets are put in small piles 4:15. Experimental catchpole machine 4:29. Different machines are displayed and tested 4:59. Two-row Danish beet topper is tested 5:09. One and two row machines 5:55. The British countryside 6:55. An almost extinct strain of deer, The Père David’s deer 7:07. Typical English country home 7:17. England’s damaged buildings from the war 7:36. The team arrives in Belgium 7:45. Spring action digger allows farmers to dig beets by hand 8:07. Horse-drawn cart filled with beets 8:33. The beet tops are thrown in a silo pit 8:50. Champion stud horse 9:05. Horses and cows work together to pull plows 9:25. Vegetable gardens 9:38. Belgian sugar factory 9:50. Manure pit on Belgian farm 10:05. Windmills pump water 10:15. Rotterdam greenhouses 10:30. Barges managed by pole in the Netherlands 10:54. Irish cattle in Rotterdam 11:15. Farmer holds beet top 11:44. Pit silo with beet tops 12:05. Cart drives over pit to pack it down 12:27. Men discuss the harvest 12:54. Windmill at sundown in Belgium 13:50. Copenhagen, Denmark 14:00. 300-year-old windmills 14:25. Old type farmyard 14:40. Fredensborg Palace, Denmark 15:03. Christiansborg Palace, home of the King is guarded 15:33. Lolland Island, 15:46. Large horses pull a cart 16:00. Small railroad engine hauls carts of beets 16:15. Clamshell machine picks up the beets 16:40. Man empties truck of pulp 17:12. Team arrives in Sweden 17:20. Man cuts the beets by hand 18:05. In Beet tops being raised into the top of a barn 18:34. Rope nets are used 18:48. Hopper elevates the beets onto a steel belt 19:00. Beets come in railroad cars 19:18. Stockholm, view from the air 19:40. The town hall in Stockholm 19:59. Hamburg Germany 20:10. On to Frankfurt which was heavily bombed in the war 20:27. Bombed out buildings are shown. “Autobahn Closed” sign, 1 mile from the Russian line 21:03. Kasell, Germany 21:09. R and G Beet seed production plant 21:15. Dr. Fritz Schneider 21:26. Triploid beets are developed by the doctor 21:38. Five row beet lifter 21:59. Horses and tractors haul beets to the receiving station 22:29. Beets are elevated and stored for 2 – 3 days before slicing 22:56. Paris France 23:20. Arc de Triomphe 23:39. The Louvre 23:48. Oxen hauling a cart across a field 24:00. Beets are loaded by factory constructed loader 24:20. Cable cars hold 300 pounds of beets to transport to different farms 24:40. Beet machinery demonstration 25:25. A conveyor belt loader fills a truck in the field 26:00. American-made John Deere machines are displayed 26:28. Aerial view of northern France 26:37. Aerial view of the English Channel 26:49. Typical Irish farmhouse is seen in Ireland 27:00. Men put beets in a horse-drawn cart by hand 27:10. Tipperary 27:44. Irish castles 28:02. A man sitting on a keg of Guinness Stout being pulled by a burro in a cart 28:13. Handymen go from farm to farm fixing tools 28:20. Back in the US, the Lincoln Memorial 28:59. B-32 bomber flies through the air 29:40.
