- [Narrator] This is a production of PBS Charlotte.

- Just ahead on "Carolina Impact".

- [Jeff] Come fly with us as we take you out to the Carolina Farms where crops are grown with a drone.

I'm Jeff Sonier with a story you'll only see on PBS Charlotte.

- Plus a passion she couldn't let go of.

How a Fort Mill chef follows her dreams while teaching others about Indian cuisine.

And you've seen them on PBS's "The Great American Recipe".

Now two local contestants take us into their home kitchens "Carolina Impact" starts now.

(upbeat music) Good evening.

Thanks so much for joining us.

I'm Amy Burkett.

Drive an hour from Charlotte in any direction and chances are you'll probably find yourself on a farm.

We're a city surrounded by agriculture, but farming here in the Carolinas isn't what it used to be.

This week, "Carolina Impact's" Jeff Sonier, and videographer Marcellus Jones Show us how today's farmers are using new drone technology to grow better crops and bigger profits with the push of a button and the whoosh of a propeller.

- Yeah, our story starts here in Shelby where we're surrounded by about 40 acres of soybeans.

Now, there's a lot of ways to farm a crop like this.

In the old days, they used mules.

Today most growers use tractors, but for a few, well, they're trying something new.

How about a crop that's not just homegrown, but also drone grown?

♪ Come fly with me ♪ ♪ Let's fly ♪ ♪ Let's fly away ♪ From a hundred feet away, we're watching this farm drone spray acre after acre row, after row.

The crop itself about 12 feet below.

♪ Come fly with me ♪ ♪ Let's fly ♪ ♪ Let's fly away ♪ - [Tucker] I'm gonna be flying across the field spraying and checking for weeds at the same time.

- And that's the voice of Tucker Green, who's also watching on his screen.

- You know, I can see if we've got a weed problem or if we've got a grass problem.

If something's present, I'll be able to see it with this camera.

♪ Come fly with me ♪ ♪ Let's take up in the blue ♪ If you'd have told me when I was 18 years old, I'd be selling drones and flying drones to spread crops, I'd called you crazy, - [Jeff] But today, Green's family grows 4,000 acres of corn and soybeans on this seventh generation farm using a new generation of farm technology that's actually cheaper than the old way to spray.

(drone humming) - Okay, you're saving money on yield.

You're not damaging your crop by running over it, but at the same time, you're not burning hardly any fuel.

I have batteries that I charge when I'm spraying with the drone.

I might burn 15 to $20 a day in gasoline to charge the batteries, whereas, you know, we're talking about burning 15, 20, $30 a a hour spraying with a ground rig.

Soybeans, pumpkins, orchards, you name it, you know it's been done with the drone, so.

♪ Come fly with me ♪ ♪ Let's fly ♪ ♪ Let's fly away ♪ Now we, now we've got some water transferring over into the drone here.

- [Jeff] Green shows us what he shows other farmers who come here to learn how it's done.

From tanking it up.

- All right, clicked off there, slammed full.

- [Jeff] To cranking it up.

- So we can go ahead and hit start.

And here, it's gonna take 66 gallons to spray this field out.

(jazzy music) And it does stir a little bit of dust, huh?

Now this drone is actually smart enough to know where it's gonna run outta liquid at based on how much is in it.

And it's keeping up with all that fully autonomously.

I'm not adjusting any height, I'm not adjusting any speed.

I can adjust that if I wanted to.

I can slow it down, change my application rate, height, droplet size, all that stuff.

I can adjust on the go while it's flying.

But from there it pretty much takes care of it itself.

- [Jeff] Green adds that his drone not only flies itself, but it also pays for itself, especially compared to traditional ground sprayers that cost at least 10 times more.

- All the way up to, you know, $750,000 if you wanna buy a new one.

- What's the drone cost?

- About anywhere from 25 to $35,000.

- Wow.

- So the initial savings, the startup savings are significant.

- [Jeff] You're doing it and you're succeeding with it.

How many other farms and farmers are are doing the same thing?

- [Tucker] It's becoming a more common thing.

It's definitely up-and-coming.

(drone humming) - [Jeff] But what about the smaller farms where some spraying is still done by hand?

Well, here at St. Paul Mountain Vineyards in Hendersonville- - How's that?

- They found out you don't have to buy a drone to try it yet.

- So this field here is three acres.

We're not having to pull a tractor and a big sprayer, big tanks.

- [Jeff] Instead the winery hired Chris Plummer, a drone sprayer from South Carolina who brings his drone to them.

- We're doing avian control to help keep the birds off the vines.

- [Jeff] Gotcha.

(drone humming) - The drones have really saved us time and money.

- [Jeff] Vineyard owner Alan Ward says St. Paul is the first winery in North Carolina to use drones for spraying.

And this year's first crop of drone grown grapes is first quality too.

- What you're looking at here, you've got good leaves, which obviously that gets our photosynthesis going.

Got good clean grapes, no disease.

With that drone, it really sprays right on the grape and we want to be good to the environment as well as the neighbors.

And we'll use about a fifth of the material because it's going right on the grapevine.

- [Jeff] Yeah.

(mellow country music) You were a traditional winemaker.

Was it difficult picturing this kind of technology in your vineyard?

- You know, early on I had my doubts.

Yeah.

I was skeptical.

Talking about it is one thing, but actually pulling it in and doing it is another, but the ultimate goal is clean fruit come September.

So I'm hoping if we can get there with a drone then there's no problem.

Even if it was a little more expensive to get him here, I think we would still do it- - Right.

- Because of the effectiveness of it.

(mellow country music) - Our farms year after year are having to become more and more efficient.

How can we increase yields, increase our bottom lines?

The agriculture spray drone industry is something that's gonna take off in the next decade.

It really is truly remarkable what they've been able to do and it's been nothing but a blessing for not only my farm but my family.

- By the way, once this farm drone is ready to land, well it's not on the ground for very long.

The whole process of refilling the spray tank and then changing the batteries only takes about one minute, just to pit stop before it's ready to spray more crop.

Amy?

- Thanks so much Jeff.

The North Carolina Department of Agriculture says that as of March, 2024, they've only issued 10 licenses for farm drone spraying, with another 10 or so expected to join that group yet this year.

Stop by our website pbscharlotte.org to find a checklist for farmers and those interested in getting a drone spraying license.

Well, since the start of our nation, African Americans have worked the land.

Yet over the past century, the number of African American owned farms has declined and so has land ownership.

There's a growing trend though, among African Americans heading back to the concept of farming.

As "Carolina Impact's" Beatrice Thompson and videographer Marcellus Jones explained, from rural to urban areas, black on the farm has become an option that many say is their true calling.

(gentle music) - A gentle farmer.

I just love introducing this way of life to other people, - Cutting grass and trimming trees and doing bushes and stuff.

And we started thinking like we need a area to grow food.

We wanna have food for our family, especially for our children.

- [Beatrice] From a rural farm that continues a family tradition, to an urban farm that has become a family business, African Americans are finding themselves part of a trend that is taking many back to the land.

- I was married into the family and learning, being so intrigued right, about the farming aspect and the history of Massey Farms.

- [Beatrice] The Massey Farm in Chester County, South Carolina has been in existence for five generations, but across the country, the share of black farmers and farms has declined significantly over the last century.

Today, just 1.4% of farmers identify as black.

- [Tammy] Great granddaddy, he tilled the land, he taught his children, they lived off the land.

Fruit, vegetable, fruit trees.

- Descendants of enslaved people who've gone through the history that we've gone through.

For us as a family to stand in this space of owning land and farming it, I mean it's a tremendous accomplishment to say the least.

- [Beatrice] Wisdom and Cherie Jzar look back at a pandemic that launched their home food forest into becoming more than just a garden patch.

- We initially wanted to just be able to have the control of our own food, where it comes from, and utilizing our land for more than beauty.

- [Beatrice] What they found was that they could make a viable family business.

Farming seven acres and half a year, Deep Roots has grossed more than $70,000 with projections for more than 100,000 by years in - And access to land.

- There it is.

- [Cherie] Access to land.

You can easily get the knowledge right, you can get the support from other farmers in this region, but if you don't have land, you can't grow.

- [Beatrice] Accessing land and money can be barriers.

The history of the federal government, the USDA and black farmers has not been an easy one.

Many black farmers have fought policies that kept them from receiving government loans like other farmers.

- And we're gonna seek the support of the USDA and the farm service agency.

As a matter of fact, I serve as a advisor on the Farm Service Agency Board because I needed to know what y'all talking about so I could share it back with the farmers who didn't have that access.

- [Beatrice] Both sets of farmers point out individuals have to educate themselves, not only on the business side.

- Before we started the farm business, I took like 12 months of going to different farmer's markets.

So like studying who is farming in our community and what are they bringing to market and where are the markets?

- [Beatrice] But the nuts and bolts of agriculture and the care of animals.

- When you live here, you gotta learn what it all, what all it is about, right?

So I attended South Carolina Farmers Education and I became a new and beginning farmer.

Woo-ooh.

Are they, and running too.

Look at.

(Tammy calling) - [Beatrice] From alpacas for sheared fiber to beef cows for meat and chickens for eggs, the Massey Farm provides for its family, but it also provides for participants and William's non-profit called Battered but Not Broken, providing a way forward for formerly incarcerated women.

- If it wasn't for the desire of women being or having the desire to want to eat healthy, to want to just give back.

So we come, we harvest vegetables and we give it to local food banks.

- [Beatrice] In Mecklenburg County, the Jzars decided Deep Roots needed to go deeper into the community.

- [Cherie] That's like a strong passion of ours.

- Yeah.

- We were able to inspire it in our own children.

Our son works here full-time now and he's 19 and he knows this is the path that he wants to take.

- [Beatrice] Deep Roots produce can be found at several farmer's markets in the Charlotte area.

At the same time, they're creating jobs.

- We're creating workforce development because we got people working here who are not working at Amazon, who aren't working at all these other places.

They're getting paid $15, $16, $17 per hour.

- [Beatrice] From feeding and taking care of animals to harvesting foods to take to market.

Each farmer has their reasons for choosing this life.

- To see and feel putting my hands in the earth, in the soil and what it did to my spirit.

- [Wisdom] Not just grow more vegetables, but grow more farmers.

- [Beatrice] And they want others to know their way of life is more than a caricature of a barnyard.

For "Carolina Impact", I'm Bea Thompson.

- Thank you.

Bea.

We also discovered there's a local group of farmers called Growers Network, which help people learn more about urban farming across our region.

Next, we move from growing food to making yummy dishes.

It took one local woman a while to find her way back to her passion of cooking.

But as "Carolina Impact's" Dara Khaalid and Russ Hunsinger show us, she's found the ultimate people magnet.

- Laughter has a special way of bringing people together.

This just so happens to be 17 years worth of laughs that Santhoshi Radhakrishnan and her husband Suresh share at their dining room table in Fort Mill.

(couple speaking in foreign language) It's a love story that began in India, then brought them to the US where they started their family.

What makes this couple unique is that they had an arranged marriage.

- When I tell that my marriage is an arranged marriage, people get really fascinated, like how do people marry someone they never knew before?

- [Dara] The answer is it's a very detailed process.

Santhoshi says, it began with her husband's family selecting her picture from a matchmaker.

Next, they went to an astrologer to make sure the couple's horoscopes lined up.

Then they reached out to her parents to schedule a day for the couple and both families to meet.

- When I saw him for the first time, I just heard this, if you're gonna miss this person, you're gonna miss something really precious.

I just heard it.

I believe it's a sign from God.

And then I knew this was the right person.

(pan sizzling) - [Dara] And nearly two decades later, you can still feel the love she has for her husband as she adds the perfect amount of spices to one of his favorite dishes, chicken tikka masala.

You see, Indian cooking is all about the spice.

That's something she learned from her mom as a child.

- I started to cook when I was maybe in middle school, I guess?

I love cooking.

I don't really understand or know how it happened, but I just always felt like cooking fascinates me.

It's magical.

- [Dara] Like many parents, her dad had his own dream that he wanted her to pursue, chemical engineering.

- He thought that it would be a better option for me and I get it because he believes that it's a great opportunity for me to study chemical engineering, get a good job, and I understand that.

But my heart always kept going back to cooking.

- [Dara] Then one day she got the idea to host cooking classes.

- Welcome to Santhoshi's Kitchen.

- [Dara] Allowing her to do what she loves and still have time for her family.

- To me it's a great happiness, you know, to watch her grow, watch her do her career.

So when she has a dream and she wants to pursue her, you know, cooking studio and cooking class, I'm just going with her flow and supporting her.

- So this is the tamarind.

It's a sweet and sour fruit.

- [Dara] Inside Santhoshi's Kitchen in Fort Mill is where Santhoshi comes to life, with a small intimate group as she teaches them about her native cuisine and the power of green chili peppers, which really turn up the heat.

- And then I shared it with everyone.

When I teach people how to cook and when they taste the food and they go like, it's great.

It's the best feeling.

That's the best feeling I could get.

- [Dara] Another feeling that satisfies her are the friendships she's made in her classes.

- We went to her home for the first class and it turned out it was her first cooking class.

So I'm like, I'm like number one, I'm like the first cooking student and it was so interesting and so much fun.

- You are going to use mustard seeds and (indistinct).

- [Dara] That was nearly 10 years ago.

And when you see them today, it looks like Chris Zimmerman and her husband Jerry have known Santhoshi for decades.

- I had no idea what was going to be coming down the road, but now I go to her kids' school plays, they come to our parties.

We're just close friends.

We all enjoy game night.

And so it really has enriched my life in a big way.

- Adrian, hi, I'm Rhonda.

- [Dara] And camaraderie is a common ingredient in the cooking classes.

Everybody here didn't know each other, but now they're just over there having a great time and telling their life stories and really connecting.

I think that food, especially in a setting like this, is a real connector and a bonding experience.

- [Dara] The joy is evident for first timer Rhonda Parks as she cooks with a smile.

- Just being with these other people who were really enjoying the moment of cooking and Santhoshi explaining everything, but yet allowing us to do the cooking.

- She was surprised to discover how in depth the class was.

- I wasn't expecting to actually learn as much as I did about Indian food.

Santhoshi taught us about each part of our meal, where it came from and what it meant to her as far as how they cook it in India.

And it did open my eyes quite a bit on another culture that I had no idea that even existed and I really appreciated it.

- [Dara] And for Santhoshi, that's what it's all about.

Bringing people together, one tasty bite at a time.

For "Carolina Impact", I'm Dara Khaalid.

- Hey, thanks so much Dara.

Well we all know food brings people together and we saw it in that last story and that's the goal of PBS's Great American Recipe.

It brings diverse people together, sharing their cultural family recipes.

Now the third season just wrapped up and we actually had two local contestants.

"Carolina Impact's" Jason Terzis spent some time with them.

- Well, I always talk about how much I love meeting the amazing people I get to do stories about, but this story was a little bit different.

I had the chance to experience and enjoy some of their favorite family recipes and had the chance to be immersed in their cultures.

- [Narrator] Welcome to the "Great American Recipe".

The celebration of American home Cooking, told through our most cherished recipes.

- [Jason] It's a cooking reality show with a little twist.

- It's an explosion of flavors, it's an explosion of cultures.

- Honoring generations of family tradition.

- [Jason] A show celebrating the multiculturalism that makes American food so vibrant and delicious.

- It's about honoring your heritage and the people you love.

- Seriously.

- Your food is all part of that American story.

- God, it's beautiful.

- It is a competition.

We are contestants, but it also focuses a lot on the story.

Where we're from, how we learned this dish.

Is it grandmama's recipe?

Is it something we picked up, something we were inspired by?

- [Jason] Season three of PBS's "The Great American Recipe" featuring eight contestants.

Two from our area, Ingrid Portillo of Monroe and Tim Harris of Fort Mill.

- I think it's a testament to how the Carolinas have grown a lot.

It's becoming its own melting pot.

- [Jason] The show giving each a chance to show off the foods they grew up with.

- It is not just the food, but it's also story how you got to creating those dishes.

How to make those recipes.

I was born in El Salvador and I came to the United States as an 8-year-old.

- [Jason] For Ingrid, immigrating to the United States was done more out of need as opposed to want.

The Salvadorian Civil War forced Ingrid's family to split up.

For five years, she was raised by her grandmother.

- My Abuelita did all the cooking.

The things that I remember most about my Abuelita is the smells of my grandma's kitchen.

- [Jason] Then came her turn to leave her home country.

- At eight years old I had to say bye to Abuelita and embark on a journey to cross borders to get to the United States.

- [Jason] The months long journey culminated with 8-year-old Ingrid swimming across the Rio Grande River to make it to the United States.

- I was so excited because I finally got to meet my mom.

I am going to have her for the rest of my life, but I'm, I'm never gonna have my grandmom.

I'm never gonna have my abuela.

She's, I don't think I ever gonna see her again.

- This is the only picture Ingrid has of her grandmother.

She honors her now by cooking the very same dishes she used to make.

- I am making sopa de mi abueal con tortitas.

which means my grandma's beans soup.

It has meat bones, beef, Salvadorian cheese.

The memories are not going anywhere.

They're still alive.

In every ingredient, they're still in there.

- Ingrid is now passing down her grandmother's family recipes to her own daughter, 15-year-old Luna.

- This is what I love about home cooking, this right here, teaching the new generations.

- It brings me a lot of pride 'cause you know, I've always grown up being very sure of like the person I am and the type of people my family is a part of.

So being able to share recipes and stories, it really helps me connect with my culture and my family.

- I think it's fundamental for development, for, to build close bond with your children to remember where you come from.

- [Jason] With 32,000 followers on Instagram and more than 400,000 on TikTok, Ingrid caught the eye of producers from "The Great American recipe".

- When I got there, I didn't know what to expect and I was like nervous, but I was so excited.

- I love how you have all of these kind of textures and then you have like this nice fried component too.

- Right now I am cooking some bacon.

My name's Tim Harris.

I live in Fort Mill, South Carolina.

I'm 45 years-old and I'm an insurance auditor.

- Tim Harris's Love for cooking is something he only recently fully realized.

A long time grill master, it wasn't until the COVID lockdown, working from home and all the negativity he was seeing online, that sparked a new interest.

- So I was joking one night about like, I'm gonna take it back old school and I'm just gonna start taking pictures of what I'm making for dinner.

And it kind of just opened up into this whole community of foodies and chefs and food products and techniques.

- I would say that's when I noticed that there was passion behind his cooking and that he really wanted to pursue it in a bigger way.

- [Jason] Tim's social media posts of the dishes he was creating started leading to opportunities.

- He ran down the stairs and he was like, this person sent me a message in my DMs.

He's like, this can't be real, right?

And I was like, no, it's definitely fake.

That's definitely not somebody reaching out to you for like legit opportunities on this.

And he was like, well, I'm just gonna message him back.

And I'm like, eh, okay.

- That opportunity was legit, a spot on Guy Fieri's "Grocery Games", which he competed in last season.

- So luckily for me, I, they, everybody had reached out to me even to be on "The Great American Recipe".

Somebody reached out to me and was like, Hey, have you heard of the show?

Like, yes, I've heard of the show, would you be interested?

We're casting for it.

Like, yes, what do I need to do?

Let's do it.

So it's, I've been very fortunate.

What I'm making here is some southern fried flounder with some cheesy grits and we're gonna finish it off with some sauteed mustard greens.

So I was really glad that I could represent the South, South Carolina, the low country with some of the recipes that I grew up with and what I call home - [Jason] Each week, "Great American Recipe" contestants competed in two challenges.

Unfortunately though for Ingrid, she had to leave the show after just two episodes due to personal reasons.

Tim went on to win both challenges in episode four.

First for his grits casserole- - [Tim] With country ham, spicy sausage and bacon in there.

- Whoa.

Wow.

- Okay, that's- - [Jason] And then his raspberry tartlets.

- I love how crisp but delicate the crust is.

I love the amount of raspberry filling you have because it's bright and tart, it's excellently made.

- But despite winning those two challenges, Tim was not selected to be among the top three to advance to the finals.

- Winning was a first priority, but more importantly than to me than that was making sure that I represented South Carolina well and that I made South Carolina proud.

- I just fell in love with both of them.

What's up next for them?

- Oh, well obviously they both love cooking so much.

That's what they're gonna keep on doing.

Cooking, creating, and sharing what they've learned with others.

Tim says he's not really interested in doing a restaurant or even a food truck, but does like the idea of cooking for smaller groups and possibly even doing a cookbook for kids.

But for now, that insurance job is still paying the bills.

But, but both of 'em, just such wonderful people, just so kind hearted and friendly and welcoming.

Welcoming me into their homes and you know, and cooking for me and I got to eat.

That was the best part.

- Oh, and we got to eat.

They are so wonderful that they shared their time and their talents with some of our donors here at PBS Charlotte.

And so we had this great event that we called it The Great American Tasting, and it was lots of fun.

And I loved their cultural foods.

I'm not gonna say it right, Ingrid, my apologies.

- Papusa.

- Papusa, yes.

- Who knew- - Yes.

- I love papusas?

- Yeah.

And that's what I love about PBS.

It brings people together, all different cultures.

We have so much in common.

Yes, we have differences, but thank you so much for showing us- - Yeah.

- What brought us together.

- Yes.

And food always does that.

- It does.

Thank you.

Jason.

Before we leave you tonight, I've got a question for you.

Who do you know that we should know?

They could make a great story here on "Carolina Impact".

Please send us your ideas to stories@wtvi.org.

Well, that does it for this week.

Thanks so much for joining us.

We always appreciate your time and I look forward to seeing you back here again next time on "Carolina Impact".

Goodnight my friends.

(upbeat music) - [Narrator] This is a production of PBS Charlotte.

(dramatic music)