Our final day was pretty busy, so we made good use of the little amount of available time we had left. The first thing we did was go over to the Friests to see their hog operation; I was not a fan. Because he knew that some of us were vegan, Brent spent a lot of time trying to explain why how they were treating the pigs ethically, and I didn’t agree with many of his arguments. For one, the pigs were kept in gestation crates for a significant period of their lives, unable to even turn around, which I would consider unethical. He argued that some humans spend most of their time in cubicles confined at work, so it is O.K. to confine hogs. This is not a very good argument for many reasons. Humans make the choice to confine themselves to cubicles. They also are free to walk to the break room and bathroom and have lunch breaks, and eventually get off of work at the end of the day and can do whatever they want. He also made the argument that it was O.K. to put hogs in confinement because they were physically healthy and got plenty of nutrients. Down south where I’m from, good slave holders used to keep their slaves fed and physically healthy so they could do good work, and that was also considered sufficient because slaves were considered lesser beings.

After leaving the Friest’s and eating lunch, we went to Ames to meet with Practical Farmers of Iowa, which seems to be an important resource for small and beginning farmers. Practical Farmers of Iowa is a community of farmers who share ideas and make it possible for beginning and older farmers to test out new ideas on their farms and network for various reasons. While there we talked to Liz Kolbe, the energy and horticulture coordinator, about many of the challenges that many of their farmers were facing. Because many members of the organization are small, organic vegetable farmers, pesticide drift from their larger conventional farming neighbors is a problem that many of these farmers face. Practical Farmers of Iowa helps the farmers who are affected by this problem to come up with solutions that could prevent drift or to know their rights when they do get drifted on so that they can seek justice. After hearing from many of the organic farmers that we met who told us that pesticide drift was a problem for them, Practical Farmers of Iowa seems to be doing important work alongside farmers.

The last thing we did on the trip was to pick up baby chicks for Dalona from the pet store to bring to her house. Some of them were to be raised to be layers and some to be broilers. It was fun to handle the baby chicks and to get them to drink water before putting them in their temporary homes, but most of all it was great to be able to end the trip working alongside Dalona’s family again.