The Busy World of Richard Scary

I found the busy world of Richard Scary today. I remember reading Richard Scary books when I was little, and staring at the illustrations: the world of Richard Scary was so small. The city was right next to the country, farmers grew every kind of fruit and vegetable in one place, then drove it to the factory that appeared only a block or two away. Everyone rode bikes. Everyone was happy, and smiled and waved to each other. The few cars that were in the pictures were incredibly small and brightly colored. There was always a cat somewhere, and the sky was always blue, and the sun always shown. That was my day today. We toured a rice farm, then a canning factory. The rice farm was exactly what comes to mind for any grain farm: large barns, grain silos, big square farmhouse across the dusty gravel road. The land was perfectly flat for as far as you could see- we are in the carefully drained Po River flood plains, a full 4 meters below sea level, perfect for rice. We toured inside the barns first, and I was surprised to see that they held all the equipment necessary to dry, process, and package the rice. No middlemen needed here- the same five or six people working on the farm do everything from planting to taping up boxes to be sent to supermarkets and restaurants. After the rice is planted, the rice fields are flooded with carefully routed trenches, and the rice grows happily in its shallow swamp. The tractors they use to harvest have very thin, tall tires in front, to squash as little rice as possible, but large caterpillar treads in the back to keep it from getting stuck in the mud. When it comes time to harvest the fields are drained, and directly after the rice is cut, the fields are burned to remove the bulk of the straw (this is fairly safe, as the base of the grass is still wet, and every field is surrounded by water).
As we drove to the canning factory, not even fifteen minutes away, I watched the fields alternate between rice and soy beans, then corn, then carrots, tomatoes, squash, plum trees, and plants I could only guess were peas or beans. Do they grow everything right here? Then a rutabaga truck drove by. Yes, I guess they do.
Our tour of the factory was everything I’d imagined it would be: we all donned white napkin suits and hats with hairnets, and followed the tour guide around through noisy rooms full of conveyor belts, pipes, and hoses. Green beans were the main product being canned that day: we watched them come in from trucks in the back, and followed them through washing, sorting, washing again, being hand-checked and sorted by old ladies in the same napkin suits, stuffed into cans, sealed, pressure cooked, slapped with labels and barcodes, pressed into pallets, plastic-wrapped, and carried by robot forklifts to the enormous, futuristic store room where over 2,000 pallets are sorted, stored, and retrieved by robotic lifts. Try as I might, I could not follow the line of conveyors, elevators, and slides that took the cans from one place to another, and I was nearly left behind by the tour while I stood and marveled at one little device that did nothing but rotate the boxes 90 degrees before letting them transfer to the next slide. Did they hire Rube Goldberg to design this factory? How could these tracks possibly be the best way to get the can from point A to point B? And yet, it obviously worked incredibly well: in the two hours we were there, the factory produced more canned goods than I could imagine eating in a lifetime. Our tour guides, both at the farm and the factory, were incredibly friendly and excited about what they did. They gave us gift bags (only fruit juice from the cannery- I was kind of hoping for green beans), and all stood and waved us goodbye when it was time for our bus to drive us home.