(lively music) - [David] From the soil of our family farms to your table, there's something special about Georgia, something you can taste in every bite.

Fresh flavors, local farms, unforgettable experiences, Georgia has it all.

Support local, taste the difference and make memories along the way.

Look for the Georgia Grown logo wherever you shop or visit georgiagrown.com.

(happy music) - [Narrator] Community, learning, working, playing, celebrating, doing life is always better together.

At GPB, we aim to provide you with the tools to be able to do life together well.

Our mission to educate, inform, and entertain inspires everything from our wide range of programming to our stimulating radio conversations to our fun in-person events.

We've got something for everyone.

Visit gpb.org/community to learn more about our upcoming events, - The fascinating and ever-changing world of agriculture.

Let's hit the road here in Georgia and meet the farmers, producers, makers and bakers who keep us all fed and keep us coming back for more straight ahead at "A Fork in the Road."

(singer humming) (upbeat music) ♪ I came from the mud ♪ ♪ There's dirt on my hands ♪ ♪ Strong like a tree ♪ ♪ There's roots where I stand ♪ - [David] Georgia farmers, artisans, merchants and producers, we depend on these men and women every day of our lives through the choices we make and the food we consume.

Their strategy and approach is always shifting, but the end game remains the same: results.

(upbeat music continues) (lively music) Like no other state, Georgia truly boasts the power of the peanut, a source of protein, a source of fuel, and a source of pride for the entire state.

Dedicated farmers have been growing, packing and shelling peanuts for several generations, and its multiple uses continue to amaze.

This week we explore the growing, sharing, and science of the Georgia peanut.

Georgia is known as the Peach State, but just as fitting would be the Peanut State.

It's estimated that over 50% of all peanuts grown in the US come from middle and south Georgia's rich sandy soil.

(happy music) The hundreds of uses of peanuts were not well known to the world until the discoveries of the peanut man himself, George Washington Carver.

In short, Carver discovered over 300 beneficial uses of the mighty peanut, including 105 ways of preparing it for human consumption.

He revealed dozens of cosmetic and industrial uses of the peanut, and even showed how struggling cotton farmers could revitalize nitrogen in the soil of their fields by including peanuts into a crop rotation, meaning plant peanuts one year and cotton the next on the same land, and see how their results drastically improve.

We begin this exploration of the peanut in Americus at the source of the great legume and seventh generation peanut farmer Jess McNeill at the Jamspread Farm.

- My name's Jess McNeill.

This is the Jamspread is the name of our farm.

My grandfather coined that back in the '60s.

J.A.M.

was his initials.

He was John Ansley McNeill.

I am the current steward is what I like to call it.

I'm standing on many other generations' shoulders.

(lively music) A peanut is a legume.

It's one of nature's little miracles, as I like to call it.

And one of the things that makes a peanut unique being a legume is it takes nitrogen out of the air, and has little industrial complexes on the roots that turn that nitrogen into usable nitrogen in the soil and for the plant.

So it's a factory for recycling stuff out of the air and putting it back into the soil, which is a really cool thing that peanuts do.

That's what legumes do.

It's very, very nutritious for our soil and not just a nutritious thing to eat.

Different varieties have a lot of different character traits as far as agronomics, so that would be disease mitigation, disease risk tolerances and profiles.

They're based on pest resistance, nematodes, bugs, different oil compositions.

There's also flavor profiles.

- [David] It can be used for peanut butter.

It can be used for peanut oil.

- [Jess] Yeah, yeah, it's a miracle crop.

Rudolf Diesel who created, invented the diesel engine, his first diesel engine ran off peanut oil, crude peanut oil.

Peanut oil can be used from powering jet engines, all the way down to eating as a snack at a ballpark, and everything in between.

Peanut oil is a very popular cooking oil because they're high smoke point and also really good flavor.

- [David] Peanuts are packed with protein.

However, there are several different types of peanuts, and that's where Jess' relationship with the University System of Georgia comes into play.

(happy music) - [Jess] This is 06G, 06-Georgia.

So at least 3/4 of all peanuts are this variety is developed by the University of Georgia, which is a really cool thing about the peanut industry.

Most all the seed varieties are with the land grant institutions.

So I work with the University of Georgia.

I grow peanuts for them, different varieties some years.

To me, peanuts are a miracle crop.

You can pick a peanut off and eat it, and it continues to produce.

It's really cool.

I call that one of nature's miracle.

But one of the things that makes peanuts unique to the southeast and to south Georgia is the soil type.

We have kinda loamy, sandy soil, and this is what peanuts like.

(upbeat music) - [David] Jess sends many of his peanuts to the sheller to be distributed.

However, many of his peanuts stay here on the Jamspread Farm to create one of many delicious varieties of peanut butter.

Jamspread even has its own country store located a little ways down the road.

When you come in to buy your peanut butter or fresh shelled peanuts, you may not see someone working here.

You'll just need to tap your payment on the iPad and enjoy, working under the honor system.

- We are so passionate about connecting the consumer to the producer, when they buy this, they know where it came from and whose hands made it.

People value traceability, transparency of supply chain, where that comes from.

But we offer that here.

The other thing we do is when we were pulling this out of our heads is we wanted a product that didn't have sugar.

We wanted a clean, simple product.

And so on the classic, there is no sugar.

It's very clean and simple.

The ingredients are roasted peanuts and salt.

That's it.

We are boldly transparent and traceable.

These peanuts are grown, you know, right out here.

These are hi-oleic peanuts in this jar, which is really fun.

We're learning more about that, and how that works with the flavors, and things like that.

Cinnamon and honey are our best sellers.

Our chocolate, for instance, it's a hint of chocolate.

We wanna be peanut first.

Artisan, it's a textured product.

We're really proud of it, and it is, you know, quite delicious.

(tranquil music) - [David] Peanut farming can be tough.

Like so many other crops, you are dependent on the weather working out just right.

Technology like harvesting equipment is always changing so peanut farmers like Jess do their best to mix everything new with the valuable knowledge handed down from generations past.

(upbeat music) (singer humming) Let's now journey a little ways to Fitzgerald, Georgia to team up with Chef Karl Gorline of the Michelin-recommended Atlanta restaurant Avize, and visit one of the state's largest nonprofits who delivered the power of the peanut to malnourished regions all over the globe.

(lively music) - My name is Karl Gorline, chef and owner of Avize, a modern alpine restaurant in Atlanta, Georgia.

Today I'm driving to Fitzgerald, Georgia to visit MANA Nutrition and meet its CEO and co-founder Mark Moore.

MANA has developed a process to make a nutrient-dense peanut paste that's being shipped to famine-stricken areas around the world by USAID.

It's called ready-to-use therapeutic food, and it's already saved the lives of hundreds of thousands of children who are suffering from severe malnutrition.

(lively music) Mark.

- Karl.

- Nice to meet you.

- Great to meet you.

- Yeah, I've heard a lot about what you guys do and super excited to come check it out.

- Oh, we're so excited to have you.

I got a lot to show you.

- Do I know how to work one of these?

How do I look?

- Moving our way towards the kitchen, looking at all the stuff it takes to put this stuff together.

We've got powdered milk, peanuts, sugar, vitamins, and some oils.

- Okay.

So kind of the cake we're making is this peanut butter concoction.

Goes in a little packet and the packet is the size of an iPhone.

Over a course of six weeks, a child will eat three packets a day.

- Okay.

- They'll come back after a week for a weight check, and then as they progress, a child will eat an entire box of this stuff.

- Oh wow, that's incredible.

- [Mark] They gain sometimes double their weight over a six-week course.

- [Karl] That's incredible.

How much protein is in like each one of the packs?

- So for kids who are malnourished, it's not that they're hungry, they cease to be hungry because of the deficiencies that their bodies face.

So the real kicker is the fats, the animal protein that's in the milk.

Between that and the peanuts, there's a ton of protein in there.

What they really need are the calories from the sugar.

- Sure.

- And the hi-oleic nature of the peanuts adds the right omegas and then the vitamin mineral mix.

So it's the equivalent of the kid eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, a glass of milk and a Flintstone vitamin, all in one concoction.

- It sounds like a pretty good meal.

- It's a good meal and it's easy for a development worker.

It doesn't refrigeration, doesn't need to be cooked and it can just be pulled out and handed to a mom.

And you could teach your mom within a couple minutes how to tear and knead it and feed it to a child.

- [Karl] This has only been happening since 2009, give or give or take for you guys?

- The whole phenomena had started with RUTF.

- The RUTFs.

Yeah.

- And that's ready-to-use therapeutic food.

(pensive music) - Kids, again, who are malnourished, they might not even have an appetite.

So this restores their appetite, gets 'em back on the right track and within, you know, a few weeks, they're looking like a whole different kid.

- That's amazing.

Let's take a look at some of these ingredients in here.

- Great.

Over this way.

You've got big bags of powdered milk.

That's not fat-dried milk.

- [Karl] That's a lot of powdered milk.

- [Mark] Up there is sugar.

So that is 6X powdered sugar, and so I know as a chef, you also love powdered sugar.

- [Karl] Yeah.

Yeah.

- [Mark] And those are two of the ingredients we'll mix in.

The peanut butter is coming from this direction, and I'll show you where it comes from.

- [Karl] It's impactful that this kind of work is happening in this area of south Georgia.

You know, these counties right in the middle of peanut country, Georgia accounts for roughly 50%, you know, of the nation's peanut consumption.

So it's a lot of like beautiful crossover.

- [Mark] Yeah, there's an amazing stat: I think if Georgia were a country, it would be like the fifth biggest producer of peanuts in the world.

- That's awesome.

- So it's pretty massive.

And behind that wall is our kiln step.

It's a giant roaster.

It roasts 10,000 pounds an hour of peanuts.

- [Karl] Wow.

- And then they're ground up and then they're piped over through these pipes above our head.

And that goes right into that mixing room that we just passed.

So all around us, these are different types of emulsifiers, vitamins right over there.

- [Karl] How many lives is that impacting?

- Last year's about two million kids that we fed.

- Two million.

- Two million.

And again, that's a kid eating a box.

So that's every child eating about 140 packets.

So it's not just one meal, it's a whole replacement of their diet over a six-week period as they grow back into kind of normal nutrition.

- Yeah.

This is incredible.

- That's a lot of peanuts.

- That's a lot of peanuts, yeah.

- Yeah.

(lively music) Welcome to the new MANA facility.

- And so this will increase the production by?

- By about four times.

- About four times.

So I mean, we could be feeding eight million plus.

- Yeah.

On the floor you'll see some stuff.

It's called quat.

It's just making sure that anything on our shoes is not being tracked in.

So it's killed anything on our feet.

But let's look at the ingredient side real quick.

These are big super sacks of sugar and milk.

No humans are gonna touch it after this.

So once it goes into the mixing system, it'll get carried over, and we'll show you what it looks like on the other side where we're headed into the kitchen.

- Okay.

- As the chef, you'll love the kitchen.

So we'll show you this.

It's a weird kitchen.

- Looks a little bit different than the equipment I'm used to working on.

- I know.

- Don't tag me in that.

- They are taking all of those ingredients that are outside of this room, bringing them into a sterile environment and an enclosed environment so nothing can get into these mixers.

And we're monitoring the microbes around them.

People in here are at a higher level of sanitation, and then no humans can touch the product while it's in here.

And our big concern is we're making food for malnourished kids.

Nothing can go wrong.

(lively music) With our product, what we hope is not that they'll eat it for the rest of their lives.

We want 'em to get back to a normal life, and then enjoy meals around their table with their family, to be better farmers, to get out of the sort of stuck area that they're in.

And the cool thing about Fitzgerald, Georgia, we're in Ben Hill County.

Ben Hill County is among the two or three lower counties in income.

So one of the poorest places in Georgia.

And yet our people here in one of the poorest places are helping some of the poorest people in the world.

So to me it's that rich people helping someone else.

- [Karl] Sure, yeah, no.

- [Mark] People who've experienced food insecurity, who experienced poverty, who experienced being down and out, saying, "Hey, I wanna make a difference."

- [Karl] I mean, that's the definition of, you know, be the change you wanna see in the world.

- The cool thing about MANA I think is that there are limited funds, and what this does is it creates jobs in America, uses American products, the money never leaves the United States.

100% of the money stays right here in Georgia, and it solves a problem overseas.

So it is a win-win in that way.

- [Karl] And you're working 24 hours a day?

- [Mark] Yeah, we close, you know, maybe two days a month to clean things like that.

But mostly we're running around the clock and then holidays.

The need in the world is five times what we can make.

So there's a huge need out there, a huge need.

If you can get ahead of it in places like Somalia and places like Congo, we could end it.

I mean, one of my dreams is that this place will be something different.

- Yeah.

- You know, we won't make this anymore.

- You'll make you start making something else.

- Yeah.

We won't need it.

- Seeing the whole facility,, is this the only thing you guys do here?

- Well, no.

We make jars of peanut butter for food banks.

We make this for Feeding America.

So we're the official peanut butter of Feeding America.

- Wow.

- We put about a million jars last year into Feeding America.

This year we'll do four million.

- Wow.

- So we're super excited about fighting hunger right here in America.

- It's the hunger piece of it.

And then the malnutrition, we're shipping that overseas, 50 different countries and then taking care of home here at the same time.

- And this is just normal peanut butter, peanuts, tiny bit of sugar in it, and then just goodness.

Good for a kid to eat.

You know what'd be cool?

I would love to do some sort of signature peanut butter pie or... - Yeah, yeah.

- Something that people could... I have a story that connected, you know, hey, it goes to MANA or it goes to-- - Yeah, is there a way that I could have access to the peanut butter and, you know, put like a peanut butter ganache, like... - Oh, I can get you unlimited peanut butter.

- Yeah.

And then we could just do the kickbacks direct.

I think that would be incredible.

Yeah.

- 'Cause people don't know who we exist.

I always say we're like the best kept secret in Georgia.

I think we're the fifth biggest non-profit in Georgia right now.

- So there's something to that.

I mean, I was unfamiliar with the project, you know, before being introduced to you guys, so let's get the exposure out there.

I can take that jar and I'm gonna get the wheels turning.

- Excellent.

Love it.

- Love it.

Thanks.

- It's a pleasure to meet.

- Appreciate it, man.

Thank you.

(singer humming) (upbeat music) - [David] Our next peanut-powered story takes us to the city of Monroe where creativity and science join forces with local restaurants to produce clean energy biofuel.

(upbeat music) Rick is a man with ideas, and with a lot of science, research, blood, sweat, and tears, these ideas usually come to life in amazing ways.

I first met Rick a couple of years ago.

He had developed an eco-friendly starter fluid and eco-friendly charcoal briquettes.

And he gave me a fascinating tour of his biodiesel facility.

Well, as time passed, the strategy changed.

The starter fluid and briquette stepped aside and the biofuel business expanded.

And upon my return two years later, I left even more impressed than the first time.

Time to meet Rick Huszagh and the team of Clean Energy Biofuels.

(lively music) - So we started in 2006.

We started really as a biodiesel plant.

And the way that came about was my wife was talking to me and she said, "We really need to look at more sustainable ways of farming."

And she said, "Look into biodiesel.

From there I made some biodiesel in a jar and then a blender, and then I went to 250 gallons, and our kids were playing in the barn, and we had methanol, and we had highly caustic sodium hydroxide, and kids and that don't mix.

And so we said, "Okay, let's figure out what our next steps are."

We found some land adjacent to our farm that was industrial land, renovated that, and then put in a timber frame.

And along the way I got a couple of partners with the Johnson family, and together we built that all by ourselves, and then made our first batch of biodiesel in 2008.

(upbeat music) If you're a restaurant and you're frying french fries, you have a lot of used cooking oil and traditionally that would go into cattle feed or poultry feed.

Biodiesel had started taking that feedstock because UCO is has a very low carbon rating and is perfect for biodiesel.

So we started collecting used cooking oil from restaurants and that was in 2011.

And from there we just kind of grew.

And so we started on a foray of all-natural lighter fluid for charcoal called Smarter Starter and EcoGreen.

We had our fingers in a lot of different places and we needed to focus.

And we had really good relationships with major oil companies where we would have orders for renewable fuels and we couldn't fill them ourselves.

In 2023, we decided, okay, let's go ahead and make things a little simpler.

Let's downsize and get out of some of the consumer goods and out of the renewable fuel, and let's focus on servicing restaurants throughout the southeast.

(upbeat music continues) So when we bring in restaurants as our customers and we service them by putting the bin in the back of the restaurant and they use that bin to dump their fryer oil into that, and we track when we pick up the oil, we track exactly how many pounds we pick up and then we will mail a rebate check to them based on where the index is at that point in time.

- [David] Nice.

- How many checks would you say you mail out a quarter?

- Around 2,000.

- [David] Wow.

- [Christopher] I find that restaurant owners and chefs usually wanna do the right thing.

This is just extra incentive for them.

- [Rick] Historically, their oil would go into animal feed, now it's going into renewable diesel and biodiesel.

So it's actually a carbon-positive thing for the environment.

(lively music) - This is the oil we use.

We probably go through 30, 40 boxes of peanut oil a month.

Every single time we clean the fryers, we have a thing outside near our dumpster that we dump all the oil in, and it all could be reused and filtered out, and used for other things.

It's just really good for the environment, like everybody should be doing that.

You're not supposed to just dispose of oil in a dumpster.

That's just not right.

(lively music) - I'm Brandon with Clean Energy Biofuel.

So I'll take my key, I unlock it, you pull it over.

We'll examine the oil that we have.

Once I see how much oil I have, I go to my truck and I get my measuring stick.

My best friend here.

All right, you wanna get it dead center.

Put the stick just enough to touch the oil and to get the correct measurements.

- [David] Kinda like checking the oil in your car.

- Yes sir.

Most definitely.

On the average day, we do maybe 20 stops.

It depends on the volume.

Sometimes we may do 23.

All right, when we make it back to the yard, I have my oil all hooked up, ready to unload my truck.

Pretty much when you get back to the yard, the whole goal is to get the right amount of oil and we take our shovel and we clean all the grease scrapings off.

And once we transport the oil, it goes from this tank and it flows over into the middle tank.

- [David] He pumped it out and said, "It heads y'all's way.

- Well, after he pumps it out at the screen box, it comes to the tank B here in the middle, that's we call Frank, and that's all the used cooking oil.

Then once that gets full, then move it over to a process tank and it processes.

- So essentially when we collect used cooking oil from a restaurant or an aggregator manufacturing anything like that, it's going to have lots of other things in it that are not oil, right?

So we call it MIU, which is moisture, insolubles and unsaponifiables.

Industry standard is about 20%.

So out of what Brandon collected, it'll be 20% water, sludge, things that are not oil.

So the only way to get that out of it is through time, gravity, temperature, right?

So you put it in one of these tanks.

This one right here, you see that has a cone bottom on it.

So all the water and the sediment all settles to the bottom with time and heat.

And then we just drain it off the bottom.

It's almost exactly like if you were to put oil and water in your kitchen and eventually it'll separate.

So we're counting on that separation so we can drain all that to service our customers and give them clean used cooking oil.

(lively music) - I either build or refurbish our return containers and the more vulnerable ones, I do a little innovations to try to stop theft from happening.

I make it much more difficult for 'em, and I have deterred 'em on several occasions.

- [David] Sounds like you're the good guy in the story and they're not.

- I try to be.

(James chuckling) - My name is Paul Ludwig.

Typically the way this works, when we receive a truck, they'll come through this door behind you,, and we'll actually hook the hose up to 'em right here.

We pump it through this system and then taken up where it's screened.

We remove all kind of the inert solids, rocks, grit, eggshells.

Like I said, it's got some chicken nuggets and stuff in there from stuff that people just wash down the drain.

All right, and from here we actually go outside to a couple of oil separation tanks.

And that's really what we wanna do is we wanna reclaim that grease so it doesn't end up in a landfill.

And now we'll walk over to the oil separation machine, which is a tricanter.

Basically the way that works is we're spinning this water-oil emulsion at really high RPMs, and we're getting a three-phase separation.

That's why it's called a tricanter.

We get a solids separation, a water separation, then we actually get a oil, and this is the product that we reclaim and then reuse, sell back to other companies for biofuels.

(lively music) - [Rick] Restaurant business is a challenging, tough business to be in.

And what they care about is they care about servicing their customer.

We pride ourselves on the service side and then collecting that oil from them and then in turn giving them money back.

But the key for them is service and responsiveness, and then also knowing that they're supporting an environmental cause.

- [David] The City of Monroe and the business partnerships all around this region are so important to Rick, and it's clear, he invests in his community, and wants to be a force of good in the world, a clean energy fuel powered by the peanut, producing a fuel that's safe, clean, and created right here in Georgia.

(lively music) So as we've learned here in the Peach State, the peanut often takes center stage.

Be it for consumption, fuel, or feeding the world, this legendary legume grows best in Georgia, inspiring farmers, chefs, scientists, engineers, and visionaries to bring its variety of powers to life.

I'm David Zelski.

See you at the next "Fork in the Road."

(lively music continues) "A Fork in the Road" was brought to you by.

(happy music) - [Narrator] Community, learning, working, playing, celebrating, doing life is always better together.

At GPB, we aim to provide you with the tools to be able to do life together well.

Our mission, to educate, inform, and entertain, inspires everything from our wide range of programming to our stimulating radio conversations to our fun in-person events.

We've got something for everyone.

Visit gpb.org/community to learn more about our upcoming events.

(lively music) - [David] From the soil of our family farms to your table, there's something special about Georgia, something you can taste in every bite.

Fresh flavors, local farms, unforgettable experiences, Georgia has it all.

Support local, taste the difference, and make memories along the way.

Look for the Georgia Grown logo wherever you shop or visit georgiagrown.com.