Well today probably had some of the most information yet. We went to a fairly large 14ish acre organic practice farm that’s still in its first few years, then went to an informational about issues centered on Monsanto with a tour around some urban gardens, finally ending with the movie Fed Up. While today’s activities were varied, they were very much centered on the sustainable agriculture side in both the practice and politics.

Starting with Table Top Farm; it was a considerably different operation than Mosa’s farm yesterday. The couple who runs it started with another couple who left last year since farming on such a small scale, especially when reliant on a client and local base for revenue, takes time to become profitable. They’ve been working the area for only a few years starting in 2011 aiming to do an organic certified project and starting with direct sales, farmers markets, and a CSA. Since last season was when the other couple left they’ve since relied solely on the CSA as they’d already built up the client base and have also gotten things established on the farm a bit more. One of them does work off-farm for further income, but it sounded like with the farm, governmental support for their environmentally beneficial practices, and this extra income they were doing well. They were even trying some new ideas with sustainable agriculture I’d never heard of like using the heat from a compost pile (which hits over 150) to heat their greenhouse to some extent. I’ll admit that some of the area appeared like it needed some attention, but I’m also used to the 1/4 garden at Furman which is manicured to look presentable and act more as a showcase garden than a place to sell food some days. Hearing the cost of investment and the unexpected problem of finding manageable land parcels for sale (Iowa usually sells hundreds of acres at once since it’s an entire farm or portion of one) was very interesting and gave us all a much more business-life side of the organic garden discussion. They were also really nice and personable people who chatted with us about their projects and some of the things we’d mentioned we’ll be doing in a few days while we weeded with them.

Next was the “march” against Monsanto. For those of you who don’t know, Monsanto is the first or second largest seed producer/chemical company that is focused on conventional agriculture. They make GMOs, pesticides (roundup), herbicides, and I believe fertilizers, which makes the company very controversial. We came in expecting a big public protest, but got there and it was actually a small gathering with speakers and an urban garden tour. We listened in for a bit about the harm of roundup-grown crops remaining in the animals they’re fed to (including us) and about the problems that mono crops and insecticides cause for bees (a major pollinator without which we’d lose 1/3 our plants). Then we saw the urban garden in the area where people rented their own plots and it was the largest I’d seen by far, but one could clearly see who worked hard and had experience vs those who forget or don’t put as much effort into it.

Last was our visit to the theater to see the new movie Fed Up (definitely recommended for those interested in food and health). The movie looked at the causes and claims around obesity and the significant growth in the number of obese children. The documentary claimed the advertising of sugary products to children, added sugars in essentially all processed food (from Nature Valley to Ragu), and the emphasis of the media on this being a personal problem to be solved by more exercise and personal responsibility led to the problem. The last of these is the most infuriating since it diverts attention about the problem from food companies to people and makes it their personal problem. Many “healthy” foods have less fats or calories, but more sugar. Most of the sugar-free items I’ve seen have artificial sweeteners, which have their own health issues (I’ve at least read multiple articles linking aspartame to serious health issues). The video argued we shouldn’t blame individuals, the amount of time it would take to work off the sugars in our diets would make that an impossible option and the “health” food can often be equally sweet as the junk food. Most importantly for them was regulation to make junk food stop the constant ads to children about eating junk food. Politics are something which I don’t claim to understand, but something complex and difficult enough to frustrate me anytime I start thinking through them. Although I don’t think it’s definitive or concrete the fact that the Princeton work described here http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/princeton-scholar-demise-of-democracy-america-tpm-interview claims that the average voters don’t matter compared to the influence of the upper class and business groups is part of the politics that frustrate me (I’d also put the recent Supreme Court decision involving individual campaign funding in the aggravating politics section, too). The movie certainly exaggerated the political problems I believe, but lobbying does cause change to governmental decisions and money allows for it. I’d just end this brief on the movie with something Dr. H-N himself said, it’s government allowing people to get what they want, cheap, good tasting food. In a lot of ways this is the cause of the problem.