Well, since we’re a bit off with blogging I’m starting with yesterday this time. The only thing we did yesterday was to visit a fairly large (by my standards, small by Iowa standards) organic farm. Blue Gate Farm is a mom-and-pop type business that is ten years old. They grow multiple vegetables, asparagus, herbs, fruits, and berries plus they hunt for mushrooms and wild berries. On top of that, they pasture-raise chickens and two alpacas as well as house bees. As such they have a lot of variety in their CSA and also have several different products that they make for customers to use. Between syrups, honeys, jams, and wool that they sell on top of veggies, they’ve only had minor issues. Apparently legislation considers anything non-fruit or berry not jam so they can’t legally sell herb syrups anymore. This is a small annoyance due to regulatory changes, but they still offer a wide variety and have worked about their program in a very smart way. They have two high tunnels for plants as well as three plots of plants, all of which have similar plants just in case one plot fails. They actually relied on this strategy one year when a neighbor’s herbicide spraying blew into their garden, causing them to lose their all natural certification for three years and actually killing off a considerable portion of their crop! The two of them have explained how long it takes to build he soil to really produce a lot this way and how long it can be before you can create your market with people and a brand they trust. Jill and Sean, the farmers, started by renting a portion of family land and have relied on these 40 acres which includes pasture and alfalfa hay pasture that they sell, for their livelihood. They were incredibly tidy, healthy looking, and seemingly forward thinking. They planted fruit trees and asparagus without any immediate gain, but once they start producing they’ll continue for years and years. Their rotations and how they plant all seem to me as a way to prepare for the end season and future seasons just as much as getting the current one setup. They also show their appreciation to their customers with a big get together of food and friends once a year, and the neighbors are invited too! In 2013, 1300 people showed up at their farm for the event.  This is probably the most impressive organic garden we’ve seen yet, and checking out their Facebook page is definitely recommended!

Now then, today we went to the FSA (farm services agency) and it’s extended agencies, talked about an animal welfare farm called Niman Ranch, and learned about tiling in Iowa.

At FSA we talked about the rural development program, FSA, and the Iowa extension office. To be honest, the FSA talk went a good bit over my head. It was talk about policies around agriculture and how they support them financially and through different subsidy-like programs. They have a number of different loans, but most importantly from this talk was that it became that recent farm bills have changed the status quo considerably. Each change in the farm bill has caused a change for them in how they operate and what they have to do while also forcing them to explain these changes to the farmers. Rural development was self explanatory and offered many programs to support the growth and development of these areas. They even offered 40-year loans to some areas for low- income necessities like schools. The most interesting for me of the three was the extension office. They are an outreach of the land grant university of the state (NC State, Clemson, etc. mainly THE state school) and offer support, classes, and information on just about everything. Every state has at least one and they can do anything from offer information based on facts about how to garden, who to call for information on social security, or simpler things like sewing or removing stains! They seemed like a fact-based, research-backed info-center and that idea just seemed very intriguing to me, especially since I’d never heard of anyone using it!

Next in the day was hearing about Niman ranch, primarily its pork products. It was a good introduction to their antibiotic free, hormone free, cage free pork. Although it is pretty self explanatory, one thing we seemed to agree on as a group was that he seemed to focus more on marketing a product that people want and which is healthy without chemicals. They also had practices like tail cutting, which they avoided to keep the animals happy and pain free. Environment wasn’t something the company disregarded, but it didn’t seem to be its primary goal either (although they do achieve some benefits with their operation over conventional animal agriculture). I honestly just find it interesting to see so many different niche food markets with health-oriented, environment-oriented, animal-welfare oriented, and price oriented food (conventional). This isn’t to say that people fit into one of these and do nothing for the others, but most people seem to focus on or at least advertise one of these more than the other three. I think different people have different priorities and whether it is founded that the food being grown differently provides the benefit (i.e., are antibiotic free pigs necessarily healthier? Doesn’t this put the animals at some higher risk and thus trade animal welfare for health?). I just find it interesting that there isn’t just different brands of porkchop or carrots, but there’s all natural, organic, antibiotic free, free range, hormone free, cage free, etc. Its great to have food that prioritizes what you do, but it’s also confusing with so many labels and what their definitive benefits might be or in some cases what the labels even mean (ie. greenwashing is using an environmental label incorrectly for market benefit. Cage free can mean confined indoors with room, ranging openly, or not caged for only part of their life. Some labels have no regulation as to what they mean!).

Lastly we learned about tiling for drainage. Simply put, this is burying pipe with enough room between pipes for water to seep in, but not soil. This way the wetlands of Iowa (originally they’d were prairie-wetlands) can be useful to agriculture. Of course there are arguments about where you should direct the flow, whether you can connect your tile to a neighbors, etc. most of these issues were governmentally fixed by creates incentives to cooperate with neighbors to form drainage district groups and to enforce rules about following the natural waters flow. It’s interesting to know the iconic flatlands of Iowa would naturally have all been grassy marshland until people made it something useful for them though.