Today we arrived at White Rock Conservancy. First, we spent a couple hours removing invasive species and picking up sticks on land that the conservancy is restoring to Oak Savanna, and endangered land form. This turned out to be pretty back-breaking work. If nothing else, I learned that I certainly do not have a future in gardening. The saving grace of this time of laboring was the donkey. The donkey, named Raji, was the guard donkey. Ragi was the ‘guard dog’ for the goats. The goats lived on the land to serve as browsers–they eat the plants that are above ground, notably the honeysuckle. Our group and a few other volunteers, were doing the work on the savanna floor removing the invasive species so the native ones could flourish. Following our volunteer activity, we had a quick lunch before going to Liz Garst’s house to pick her brain on all things agriculture. Ms. Garst is the grandaughter of the Iowa legend, Roswell Garst, who became famous for selling hybrid seed corn to Iowa farmers during the 1930s and for forming the Garst Seed Corn Company. To say Ms. Garst was a wealth of knowledge would be an understatement. She had very strong opinions, but from what I could discern, she was a much more middle-of-the-road person than many of the people we had thus far. She was a realist without being pessimistic. I found that the most interesting thing that she talked about was Iowa State. She spoke about how Iowa State was in big ag’s pocket. Big ag businesses pay for the research they conduct which means that the research has a bias and a desired outcome. Additionally, they only employ people with their point of view. This is especially upsetting because a place of learning should promote and display a diversity of viewpoints. She was not a fan of the philosophy that the University was required to speak “with one voice on agriculture” because it was imperative that it did so to “feed the world’s growing population.” This was interesting and made me reflect on after talking to Professor Heaton who was doing research for Iowa State.  Looking back, I do see that she did display the point of view that Ms. Garst talked about. I also liked Liz Garst’s argument that markets need to be less politicized. Trade and politics need to try to be kept more separate for the sake of everyone’s well-being.