May 20, 2019
To begin our day we ventured from Morris’ house to Johnston, Iowa for a tour of Corteva AgriScience. Kevin Diehl, Regulatory Platform Director of Global Seed, led the tour and discussion. One interesting aspect of his presentation was that he gave us a different perspective of crop insurance when he talked about crop protection products. When using this term in the seed business, it refers to the following products: herbicide for weeds, insecticide for insects, and fungicide for controlling diseases. Although these pest, weed, and disease control products help protect crop yields, they can have a negative impact on the environment due to runoff affecting water quality. He also discussed new innovations in genetic editing, specially CRISPR. By using CRISPR, plant geneticists can more easily find the part of the genome that they wish to delete, edit, or replace. CRISPR allows plant scientists (among others) to work more quickly to breed plants, but also it also allows plant scientists to bring GMOs to the market more quickly as well. It’s molecular scissors can quickly locate a target phase sequence. These technologies are helping farmers increase their farm’s productivity. Corteva AgriScience is working on ways to meet the increasing worldwide demand for food.
Later we made our way to the Iowa Soybean Association in Ankeny, Iowa. We met with Michael Dolch, director of Public affairs, Chris Hay, Senior Environmental Scientist, and Grant Kimberley, Director of Market Development. During the presentation, Chris Hay took us to his water lab and the work the association does to monitor water quality and how it deals with nutrient reduction strategies. He discussed how communities as far away as the Gulf of Mexico could be affected by this nutrient runoff. Dead zones caused by nutrient runoff are created in rivers that travel downstream. Iowa is a leading producer of soybeans in the U. S. so the work done by this association is important to farmers. While soybeans do not require farmers to add additional nitrogen to their crops (soybeans fix nitrogen), ISA sees that soybeans are in a rotation with corn, which does require nitrogen, so the association sees the nitrogen-reduction problem as a system issue, not one that is limited to corn production.
Speaking of corn, we also visited the Iowa Corn Growers Association. We met with Rod Williamson, Director of Research and Development and Kevin Studer who is a Federal Policy Advisor. The presentation reinforced what was covered in one of our readings about the farm lobby. The farm lobby promotes subsidies included in the Farm Bill. They discussed how the Iowa Corn Growers Association lobbies for its corn farmers on state and federal issues taking their agenda from its grassroots members–the farmers. This agenda then shapes ICGA’s policy positions. At present, the association has formulated a long-term water quality funding effort and also focused on transportation issues, including infrastructure maintenance and upgrades to the inland waterways system. The grassroots meetings that are facilitated by Iowa Corn to its members influence the importance of the lobbying work these organizations are making to farmers.
To conclude our day we were fortunate to meet with Dr. Angela Franklin, President of Des Moines University, who is a Furman alum. She discussed her Furman career, her career advancement to Iowa, and her role as Des Moines University President. She has had an impressive post-Furman career. On our journey back to Radcliffe, I was given the responsibility of selecting music to make our ride a little more enjoyable, not an easy task I must say.