This morning we got a nice break from animals and corn fields. We got to explore Iowa City for a few hours. I got my much needed girly fix by getting my nails done and buying a bracelet. I also bought a ring at a more “hipster” store and got called out for being a preppy girl, and she told me I was taking a step in the right direction buying something hipster… whatever that means. Once we got back together we went to Mary Mascher, a Democratic Iowa House Representatives’s, house. There we met with Mary, Sally, Jim, Lance and a few others to discuss policies, practices, and politics. The discussion began with Jim describing Iowa. He told us it was the state with the most changed landscape, smallest amount of public land, highest density of roads, and full of corn and soybeans. His questions with the way things are being run now was, is the the right way? Is this sustainable? Sally responded with the reoccurring conflict that we have been discussing this whole trip. Conventional vs. Organic in looking at the economics and sustainable issues with both. If the conventional farmer is going to have the big equipment they need the high yield to pay for it. Also with corn prices going up, everyone wants to plant as much as possible. On the sustainable side, they want incentives to plant grass waterways because that land contains acres they could be making money off of with planting corn. The economic factor plays a bigger role in the conventional farms than the sustainable. They want to feed the world and the way they see to do that is with chemicals. There is a however a coexistence of organic farmers in the mix, who do have sustainability in mind more, but they cannot mass produce the food the conventional farmers can. It is important, I think, that they work together. You will not convince all conventional farmers to go organic, but you can slowly get them to change their ways to be more sustainable. But, we still need both kinds of farmers.

Another big topic discussed was population and our negative effects on the Earth. The population is continuing to grow, but according to Jim there will not be a decent world for them to live in. There will be no more wild fish, he believes, because of the way we fish with large nets and the soil will be in worse condition than it is now. Jim’s way to fix this is by fixing yourself. He said you can’t change others, but you can change yourself. Then he went on a rant about how we need to be skeptical because we are not as smart as we think we are. He claimed the doctors didn’t have a clue about how the brain works. I know that we don’t have everything figured out just yet, but I do not agree that we are just “advanced monkeys” as he called us.I think we have a lot to thank doctors for and give them major respect and thanks for all they have done to better our health. I mean life expectancy has nearly double, and he thinks we don’t have doctors and modern medicine to thank for that? He is wrong there in my opinion.

Another interesting thing discussed was the fact that Republicans don’t 100% attribute climate change to humans and Democrats don’t believe science when it says GMOs are safe. That is interesting to me and I don’t really know why this is. Mary was telling us to be skeptical about what we are told as well. It was a little bit scary to hear her say not to always trust the government though. But I do agree you can’t always believe what you hear and it will be interesting to see if any new information comes out in my life time about GMOs or global warming. It will also be interesting to see how farming changes as well in the future. There is no telling what will happen because so many things go into it that are too complicated for us to find a solution for yet.