Yesterday was wonderful. Although another early morning led to an IV of caffeine and coffee, I was still very excited about what was coming for the day. We started out at Pioneer Seed Company in Johnston, Iowa. Pioneer Seed, founded by Vice President Henry A. Wallace has been extremely prominent in the world of agriculture for decades. Over the past two weeks, we have read, discussed, and heard first-hand accounts on both sides of the issues surrounding agriculture today. However, we haven’t even begun to scratch the surface of many of these issues. Our visit with Pioneer made this point very clear. The people at Pioneer aren’t angry mad scientists working for their own benefit; they are working to “feed the world.” Although I did enjoy our visit with Pioneer and found it to be interesting, I still feel like what they were saying came out of talking points our tour guides received on their first day on the job. Every answer to every question we posed was answered with caution. Daniel, our tour guide, was very informative and charismatic (I wonder how he got the job), so our tour was very good. While there, I asked the question that has been bothering me for the past week or so. Almost the whole time we’ve been around production agriculture, we’ve been discussing the issue of overproduction. The various farm bills and subsidies provided by the US government, as discussed in Imhoff, provide a reason for this overproduction. Farmers in America are rewarded for producing as much as they possibly can. The question I had prepared was a way for people on the side of production agriculture to give me their perspective. I asked, “We’ve been talking a lot about mass production of corn in class, and have even interviewed and experienced the process up close and personal. We’ve also discussed what mass production and overproduction can do to the prices of corn not only in the US market, but in the world market as well. Overproduction leads to cheap corn that is imposed on other countries, which may not be as developed as our own, in the form of dumping. This seems to make America look like the villain. Why?” I briefly stumped them. But in a very round about way their response had to do with the “feed the world” issue. Okay, I thought to myself, I can agree with that. Iowa is actually feeding world anyway. Iowa ranks first in the country in not only corn for grain production, but also a plethora of other things. Some examples are hog and pig inventories, egg production and soybean production. Although a fair amount of these products are consumed in the US, many of these products are exported to other countries for use. Countries such as China that has over a billion mouths to feed provide a perfect example of the “feeding the world” theory of agriculture. The visit with the Iowa Corn Growers Association was very interesting as well. We got great insight on the real scientific facts behind not only corn in Iowa, but also corn around the world. It was pretty fascinating. One thing I have learned on this trip thus far is how curious Iowans are. Just about every person I’ve spoken to has asked me the question, “What are you doing here?” After our meeting with the Iowa Corn Growers, a few of us were even interviewed by the local television station (I happened to be one of the lucky victims). We then trekked back and watched The World According to Monsanto, a film bashing on the terribleness Monsanto and what it is doing to the world. It was interesting, especially after spending most of the day being convinced to not believe what we hear from films like the one we watched. However, I do believe the film was deficient in making its argument because of the spastic nature of the film. The main researcher, a French woman, was seemingly spastic in her research. Quite frankly, she lost me after her first example.