As a whole, the FARM course has been one of the best courses I’ve taken at Furman, and it has certainly been the most unique. I also believe that the information I gained in the course should be of the highest importance for anyone who is a part of our global food system. This makes the FARM course perhaps the most relevant and practical study away program, and I would recommend it to any Furman student. First of all, the course heavily reinforced my confidence in my choice to follow the vegan diet. Especially in the United States of America, the cesspool of selfishness, most people follow diets for their own health and preservation. Regardless of how healthy veganism makes me, taking this course has furthered my understanding of how interconnected our food consumption practices can be with the Earth and the other species that inhabit it. Therefore, I have no desire to participate in food practices in which animals that were at one time wild, autonomous creatures are bred for domestication, and enslaved to the human species for the “improvement” of our diets. While I am opposed to all forms of animal agriculture throughout history because I believe we forfeited our right to eat other animals upon our invention of farming and accompanying separation from the rest of the animal species, I was especially bothered by the conventional forms of animal agriculture that I observed on this trip. In those systems, animal life was valued purely for its economic value, as the workers within these systems confirmed over and over again that of course they did not abuse the animals, because if the animals weren’t healthy, their meat would not be as high quality and would not demand as high a premium from the consumer. Within many of the organic / small-scale / “animal welfare” livestock facilities we visited, the workers and owners at least had an awareness and respect for the value of non-human life.

Other than helping me to validate my vegan diet, this trip also challenged me on some of my other food consumption practices that are lacking in ethical awareness and should be improved in the future. I currently consume too much food from a system that treats plant life and the land much in the same way that I criticize the conventional meat industry for. Non-organic forms of agriculture and the over-processing of food are making an arrogant statement to the Earth that it is incapable of providing for our ever growing desires, and that we can strip it bare of anything that is useful to us, proceeding then to distort and modify those resources to create barely recognizable forms of what once was a beautiful gift. While I am sometimes disgusted with the human species and wish that I could return to my hunter-gatherer roots, my socialized dependence on modern conveniences that have rendered me soft and weak would prevent me from ever making that decision if it were even possible. On a more positive note, human greatness is evidenced by our ability to contemplate questions such as these, and this greatness can be both a marvelous tool and weapon of mass destruction. I will do my best to use my greatness as a human being to live out a life of stewardship and encourage others to do the same, rejecting an attitude of domination towards the rest of creation.

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.

This morning we went to the Leopold Center at Iowa State University, which focuses on research and education related to ecological preservation and sustainable agriculture. While there, we were able to have a conversation with Matt Liebman and Fred Kirschenmann about a lot of the stuff we had been learning and more about what each of them were doing with the Leopold Center. I was especially excited to be able to meet Dr. Kirschenmann after we had watched My Father’s Garden and Symphony of the Soil because I really liked a lot of the philosophies he had espoused in those movies. Matt Liebman did a lot of the talking at first because he had to leave early, and most of the stuff he had to say revolved around the research he was doing at the Leopold Center. I found his ideas regarding the farming of mixed native perennial crops to be really interesting. He told us that because of the carbon bonds in plants, basically any form of biomass can be harnessed and used as fuel. Therefore, because a lot of corn crops are grown right now in order to make ethanol, these could be replaced with polyculture native perennials instead, which could still be used for fuel. Changing much of the landscape back to native perennials could help with soil health, and it could decrease the amount of nitrogen runoff. Dr. Kirschenmann was significantly more negative about the future than Matt Liebman, but I thought he was realistic about a lot of the warnings he was giving about what the state of the Earth will be in the future if conventional farming practices are maintained. I also enjoyed talking to him about how he applied the Garden of Eden story in the Bible to modern day farming. We have to be careful to not eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge, which would be thinking that we can dominate the Earth and that we can consume endlessly without suffering any consequences for doing so.

In the afternoon we went to Monsanto to do a short tour of the facilities and talk with some representatives about some of the controversies surrounding the company. The representatives did a good job defending the company, and I do think that some of the arguments against Monsanto and GMOs are not very good, but the representatives were not able to convince me to begin supporting their company. I am still philosophically opposed to large corporations owning patents for certain seeds and genes. Plants and the seeds that they produce are supposed to be gifts from the land for all humanity to benefit from. The highlight of today however was seeing my new phrase and philosophical movement, “Life is Life”, start to gain traction in the Des Moines community. When the representative from Monsanto used the phrase, I realized it was truly a universal movement that would be unstoppable. I’m looking forward to seeing where the “Life is Life” philosophy goes in the future.

P.S. I also got Joan of Arc’s “A Portable Model Of” LP on clear vinyl at a Des Moines record store, so I was very excited about that find.

Today, after we woke up and ate breakfast, we got a couple hours of free time to hang out in downtown Iowa City, which was exciting because we don’t get very much free time, especially not in a populated area. As in any new city that I go to, I found a good record store and went immediately there. It was called Record Collectors, and it was a pretty cool store for being in Iowa. I bought The Judas Factor’s “Ballads in Blue China” LP, which I’ve never seen before and am excited about. After that was done, I basically wandered around the city with everyone else and watched them shop in various clothing stores. At one point we went to a local ice cream shop and I got a slushy smoothie. The town itself was pretty hipster, and so were most of the stores that we went in. Hedley is a pretty preppy individual so it was funny to see her trying to navigate the world of hipster fashion while looking extremely out of place, especially when she bought a ring at this one shop and the girl at the counter said, “I think this is a step for you in the right direction”.

Our free time ended with a trip to Mary Mascher’s house, who is a Democratic state legislator in Iowa. She had organized a type of panel discussion in her living room which ended up being really interesting. The panel included Jim, who was an activist and did a lot of planting of trees and restoration of native habitats, Lance, who was acquiring his PhD and doing research on climate change, Sally, who was also a Democratic state legislator, and David, an organic urban farmer in Iowa City. We talked about a lot of large questions regarding agriculture, climate change, and politics, and I found myself agreeing with a lot of what Jim said, as he took a pretty radical stance on the side of small-scale sustainable organic farming that most mimicked the natural environment. He said that Iowa has the most changed landscape of any state in the United States which makes sense, given that Iowa was mostly covered in wetlands before European immigrants settled here. It still saddens me to think about all of those wetlands being drained to plant rows and rows of the same crops across the entire landscape of Iowa. 60-70% of Iowa’s land is corn and soybean fields. One thing that Lance brought up that I thought was really interesting is how much building, roads, and other types of pavement contribute to climate change. I vaguely understood this argument but would like to know more about this. We also talked a lot about population control in the conversation because Sally was making the common argument that conventional agriculture is necessary because we need to feed the world. However, we finally came to the conclusion that it was not population that needed to be controlled, since population is leveling off in most industrialized countries and that will most likely happen in any country that is industrialized.  Rather, the demand for food is rising because of the growing middle class in nations such as India and China, and with that rising middle class comes the demand for animal proteins.  Consumerism is driving the bus.

On Tuesday night, we went to see a new documentary that had just come out called Farmland. It was funded by agribusiness groups, and its purpose was to counter some of the more recent food documentaries which have questioned conventional food production practices. Farmland sought to help the public understand what farmers do, and it followed the stories of six farmers who were involved in different types of farming operations. While it was a well-made film and could have maybe been successful as an introduction to farming for the general public, I did not learn very much new information from it after being a part of the FARM class for two weeks.

The latest in the organic farms that we have been visiting on the trip was Blue Gate Farms, an all-vegetable farm where the owners, Jill and Sean, also kept chickens for their eggs and two alpacas for their fur, which Jill would use to create various products. Blue Gate Farms had the most chickens of any farm we had been to yet, as I think they had about 125 birds. Also, a huge difference between Blue Gate and Table Top farms, which we visited earlier in the trip, is that Jill and Sean from Blue Gate found that attending the Des Moines Farmer’s Market was very important to their business, while Luke and Sally from Table Top just found it to be a lot of effort but not really worth it. This exemplifies the variety of different options one has when deciding how to run a small-scale organic vegetable farm.

This morning we went to both the offices for the Iowa State Extension Program and the Hardin County USDA, which are in the same building. On the Iowa State Extension Program side of things, we learned about how there is a land-grant university in each state, and part of the mission of that university is to be a resource to the community. I might be interested in taking advantage of some of the resources offered from NC State or Clemson in the future, which are the land grant universities in North Carolina and South Carolina. Upstairs in the USDA offices, we heard some information about water quality and conservation issues that contradicted some information we had heard from Denny Friest. While Denny was of the opinion that water quality improvement efforts were getting better and that farmers did not need to be regulated because they were slowly beginning to make the needed changes, we heard today from one employee that he thought we were going backwards as a farming society and actually creating more water quality problems; therefore this employee was of the opinion that regulations were necessary.

After leaving those offices, we went to talk to a representative from Niman Pork, which is a company that has a commitment to raising animals using traditional, humane husbandry methods, all natural feeds and no unnatural hormones and antibiotics. I thought it was interesting how there seems to be plenty of demand for the Niman Ranch pork products, to the point where they can’t actually keep up with the demand for some of their customers, like Chipotle. There seems to be a greater interest among consumers about buying meat that has been humanely raised, even though as a vegan I think that concept is kind of an oxymoron.

The last thing we did today was talk to Denny Neubauer and Caleb Knutson about the history of tiling in Iowa. One of the things I found out on this trip that I did not previously know was that Iowa was originally primarily wet lands which had to be drained to be turned into farm lands. The tiling is basically just pipes that are installed under the land so that the water will drain down into them and flow into a ditch or creek downhill. When this tiling was first being put in and laws started to be made regarding it, a farmer could drain his tiling right onto the surface of his neighbor’s field if the neighbor refused to pay the fee to tile his land. After talking about tiling for awhile, I can’t help but be of the opinion that the wetlands should have never been drained in Iowa, which is probably not a very popular view among Iowans involved in agriculture.

This morning we woke up and Renee Zoske came to the farm to talk to us about crop insurance. The last time someone came to the farm to talk about farm loans, it got a little over my head, so I was hoping that this would be more accessible. It was in fact very accessible and Renee did a great job explaining a concept that we weren’t very familiar with to our group. Something that is important to understand is that farmers don’t pay the entire premium for their crop insurance because a large part of it is subsidized by the government. I had understood why this was the case for small farmers because paying the full premium would be too much of a cost, but I did not understand why the government still subsidized the crop insurance for larger ones like Summit Farms. According to her, the reason is that if the government chose not to subsidize crop insurance for the larger farms, those farm would join together and create their own insurance company, which would take money out of the insurance pool for the small farmers. My impression was that this would raise their premium a lot. This was a good explanation I thought and gave me a better idea of why the government is subsidizing larger farmers.

After lunch, we drove three hours to Decorah to go to Seed Savers Exchange, which was one of the coolest places we have been thus far. It was started by a couple who had been entrusted with some heirloom seeds that had been passed down through generations. The couple realized that they could very well be the only ones with those seeds and did not want to be completely responsible for the continuation of the plant species, just in case something happened, so they decided to start searching for other people who had heirloom seeds so that the different seeds could be exchanged, therefore increasing the likelihood that they would survive. The list of people who had heirloom seeds to exchange grew larger and larger and that is how heirloom seeds came to be. The headquarters of the Seed Savers Exchange were pretty cool, as they kept an extremely large amount of seeds there, growing different rare plants and selling many seeds in its gift shop that I had never seen before. I thought it was really awesome that there were people who were so dedicated to pursuing genetic diversity in a world where the most efficient genes for plants are selected and the rest are just sort of forgotten. A woman named Toby Cain gave us the tour of the property and took us through her personal garden, where she had divided her plants by their country of origin. For all of the countries she had included, she included vegetables from those countries’ traditional diets that have in many  caseknown different types of apple. This is remarkable when you look at the few types of apple that are sols become forgotten. When we went over to look at their apple orchard, we learned that there are 15,000 apple varieties, but only about 12 in a typical grocery store.

This morning we woke up really early and drove to Cory Farms, which primarily specializes in grass-fed lamb and beef, though we found out the family is also interested in many other agricultural and non-agricultural pursuits. When we first got to the farm, we went to the barn to milk the goats that they had. While I did not participate in the milking, I watched, and they gave each goat individual attention as they milked it, brushed it, and then let it out back into the pasture. The family drinks the raw milk from the goats, which is an important part of their diet. After milking the goats, we helped pick both rhubarb and asparagus from their organic gardens, which we were to have later as part of our lunch. We then were shown both where they kept their broilers (meat chickens) and egg laying chickens. The broilers were kept in movable coops so that they could be relocated around the pasture, giving time for the grass to replenish itself using the manure from the chickens. The broilers were also fed with a soy-free feed, and they explained that there was a market for chickens raised without soy. Because of this lower protein diet, the chickens do not grow as quickly as conventionally raised chickens. The layers were in a similar movable coop (an egg mobile modeled after the one made famous by Joel Salatin of Polyface Farms in Virginia).  The egg mobile was above ground (unlike the coop designed for the broilers) and had areas for the chickens to lay the eggs. The other large difference was that these chickens could go in and out of the coop during the day as they pleased to roam about the pasture. They were, however. closed in at night to protect them from predators. After seeing the chickens and collecting eggs from them, Tom Cory took us into his shop to talk to us more about the business side of their operation and to show us samples of his meat products. The product that the Corys seemed most excited about was their meat sticks, which are similar to Slim Jims but are made with their grass-fed beef and include no preservatives or additives. We then rode in the van with Tom over to one of his pastures, where there were cattle and sheep grazing. This was the first time we had seen sheep on our trip. We were going over to the pastures to move all of the livestock from one fenced in area to another, and we had to put up a temporary fence around the new area. This is done to minimize the amount that the livestock can graze on to a single plot of land.  The Corys own wetlands, which is where they extract most of the water that the use to water their livestock. On our way back, we noticed a lamb that appeared to be very sick and close to death, so Tom put it in the back of the van to take back to the farm. However, on the way back it died, and many of the other students were upset about it. It was not upsetting to me because animals in the wild die of disease all the time and this lamb died naturally. It is bizarre to me that people can be saddened by a lamb dying naturally but can continue to support the systematic raising of animals to be killed by supporting the meat industry. The last thing we did before lunch at the Corys was to help in their garlic plot by laying down cardboard and composted mulch to keep the weeds from growing up in between the plant rows. At this point, we went inside to eat and to hear Mary talk about how she views food as a medicine and how she believed that eating correctly can help to prevent sickness. When her family did get sick, Mary promoted the idea of home remedies to heal the ailments rather than taking her children to the doctor. I really respect this outlook on health, as I feel that people are too quick to medicate themselves and trust in pharmaceutical companies when our bodies have the means of healing themselves. Also Mom if you read this the Corys are largely influenced by Joel Salatin’s ideas.  The Corys even generously gave the program one of his books and have attended seminars at Polyface and hosted him at their farm.

After we left the Cory Farm we went to Lincolnway Energy, which is an ethanol plant. While there we learned all about the different processes that go into the production of ethanol and were able to see them happening during our tour of the plant. We also talked a little bit about government policy, as our tour guide was worried about what the new Renewable Fuels Standard (RFS) would do to the ethanol industry. His answer to those who criticize the ethanol industry for being too dependent on government support is that oil is subsidized even more than ethanol by the federal government.

Since today is Memorial Day, we began our morning by attending a Memorial Day service at the Radcliffe Cemetery, where there are veterans buried who fought in wars reaching back to the Civil War. During the service, the names were read from all of the veterans who had fought for the United States who were buried in the cemetery, including veterans from both the Confederacy and the Union. In addition, a woman spoke about the value of those who had served in the military and how we should all be grateful for their sacrifices. I found it interesting that the speaker applied verses in the New Testament about loving one’s neighbor to the soldiers who were fighting in wars, when war is a conflict between neighboring nations where hate is manifested in violence.

Continuing our discussion of the Robert Paarlberg text, the most recent chapter we read focused on the politics of obesity. While Paarlberg does consider obesity in the United States to be a problem, he did not advocate the same solutions as the creators of Fed Up, as he ultimately saw obesity as less of a political issue than alcohol or tobacco use and advocated more of a personal solution to the problem. This may be a solution for those educated in healthy eating, but for the poor and uneducated members of the population, there is a gap in knowledge about and resources for staying healthy. I do believe that consumers should have the right to choose what they should eat, but people should be completely aware of the consequences, and no one should ever be forced to eat trash because they don’t have access to healthy, natural food sources.

Before we ate lunch, we worked in the garden at our house with Dalona. She had planted lettuce, peas, and radishes behind the house before we came so we could have our own plot to work in while we were here. Therefore, we had a lot of weeding to do today in hopes that we might be able to harvest some radishes or lettuce before we leave.

Of the two documentaries we watched this evening, the first was Symphony of the Soil, which focused on biodynamic farming practices seeking to improve soil quality while farming while using a method that mimics natural processes. This contradicted many of the views we had heard so far from the conventional producers who have been claiming that organic practices cannot match the yields of conventional practices, which are required to feed the world, especially as the world’s population is predicted to reach 9 billion people by 2050.. According to the documentary, not only can organic biodynamic farming match conventional yields, but it can actually surpass them. This film also somewhat contradicted the Paarlberg text, which said that all forms of agriculture degrade the environment. Symphony of the Soil, on the other hand, asserted that the form of biodynamic agriculture it advocated could actually add to the quality of the soil and turn areas with awful soil into highly productive ones. Not only does the biodynamic organic farming improve the health and productivity of the soil, but it also decreases runoff and erosion into the waterways and increases water absorbed down into the water table underground. A lot of the decreased erosion comes from the cover crop that is left on top of the soil due to the no-till method. The documentary promoted the same no-till practices that Glen Hodnefield yesterday, and it seemed to claim the same benefits from those practices. While these two sources agreed on the no-till method, we heard a different opinion when we heard from Denny Friest later in the evening.

The second documentary we watched was called Ocean Frontiers, and it focused on different practices used along the coastlines and within the mainland were affecting the health of the oceans. The one chapter of the documentary that was most relevant to what we are learning on this trip centered on how nitrogen runoff in Iowa agriculture is making its way into the Mississippi River and flowing into the Gulf of Mexico, creating a dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico approximately the size of Massachusetts. Denny Friest, who is our neighbor down the road, played a signfiicant role in the making of the film and was part of a group of farmers that traveled to Mississippi to meet with fisherman and politicians and talk about a plan to reduce the amount of nitrogen flowing into the Gulf of Mexico. After we watched the film, he talked to us about how regulations sometimes frustrated him as a farmer because he knows more about how to fix things on his land as a farmer than one-size-fits-all bureaucrats in Washington, D.C. While I don’t think that every farmer has the same moral fortitude that Denny might have just as it would be in any profession, it was cool to observe how farmers realized they were having a negative effect in the Gulf in the film and took the initiative themselves to fix it.

The first thing we did today was to go to Mark Tintjer’s house to learn about beekeeping. For someone who got his start in beekeeping by buying a book about it and then learning by trial and error, it was inspiring to see how much he knew about it and the significant scope of his operation. He let us watch as he moved each shelf from one of his hives into a bigger box because the number of bees was getting too large for the previous box. While doing this, he showed us that drone bees do not have stingers like worker bees, which is something that I never knew. He also pointed out the queen bee to us, which is longer than the rest of the bees and is the only one in the hive. At one point we even got to eat the larva of a drone bee, which tasted pretty disgusting but is apparently high in protein. After that, Mark took us into his house, which he built with his own hands, and explained how he extracted honey from the combs to sell. It was also very interesting to hear him and his wife talk about their general dislike for many conventional farming practices. Beyond many of the pesticides having negative affects on his bees, Mark and his wife also have an organic garden, and they explained how many of the plants in their garden are sometimes ruined by drifting pesticides from the conventional corn and soybean fields surrounding their house. Overall, Mark was a very fascinating and hardworking individual and I admired everything he was doing on his land.

After leaving Mark’s house, we went to go talk to Glen Hodnefield about both his no-till and strip-till practices, which are viewed by most of the surrounding corn and soybean farmers as unusual. The idea behind not tilling one’s fields is to reduce the erosion that occurs on many conventional corn and soybean fields. It also saves the farmer time and money because he/she does not have to go out in the fields to till them. Because Glen also has some highly erodible land (HEL), he is both required by the government and personally motivated to apply land conservation practices like his no-till and strip-till methods and other conservation practices like grass waterways and buffer strips. It was cool to see how a corn and soybean farmer was putting to use some of the practices that we learned about when talking with the Iowa Environmental Council.

The first thing we did this morning was go to Tabletop Farms, which is an organic CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) Farm. It was run by a couple, so it was different from the farm we went to yesterday because it was their business and was not backed by a nonprofit organization like the Henry A. Wallace Center. This made the economic risks for the people running it that much greater. This was evidenced by the fact that they used to be in business with another couple who had chosen to leave the operation because of how stressful it was for them. It was really interesting to learn about all of the aspects of how they ran their farm and especially about the contraption in which they produced compost. Before leaving, we even got to help weed around the rows of kale.

The next activity on the list was to attend the March against Monsanto that was planned for this afternoon. While we did not really know what to expect, we figured it would be an interesting experience. I was hoping for more of an intense protest atmosphere with masses of protesters being beaten by the police, but it ended up just being more of a small informational gathering with speakers and tables set up about various things that were related to small scale, organic agriculture. One of the more interesting speakers was a man who raised bees and talked about why he believed that many of the chemicals being used in conventional farming nowadays are responsible for a lot of the decline in bee colonies. I had heard this argument before, and found it compelling so I enjoyed hearing him expand on it.

The last thing we did was go see the new food documentary, “Fed Up”, which took aim at processed sugar as being the most dangerous threat to our health currently in the United States. While I already knew that processed sugar was terrible for our health, it reminded me to pay more attention to how much of it I am consuming, since my vegan diet does not prevent the overconsumption of it, and I am certain that I could continue to cut down on it. Also, the film really emphasized the addictive properties of sugar, and I do not think that fact was exaggerated at all. We very much have a nation of kids and adults alike who are heavily addicted to sugar and other processed foods.