Thinking back on all the vital information that we soaked in today, I realized that I learned more about agricultural production in one day than I had expected to learn in our entire trip. Today we made the trek over to Iowa Falls to meet with Mr. Kevin Butt, a professor at the Ellsworth Community College. He gave us amazing advice and instruction on behavior and safety requirements in and around farming industry and livestock holdings. Being a horseback rider, the animal safety tips weren’t entirely new to me, but I found the other advice regarding tractor and equipment safety to be very useful. His explanations of the evolution of farming equipment was so interesting, as I can honestly say before today I couldn’t tell you the difference between using John Deere (green) versus Case IH (red). Now I can tell you it’s just as controversial as donning Houndstooth in Tigertown, Al. BAD IDEA. Those of y’all from above the Mason-Dixon, just look up “Auburn v Alabama” and “football.” From planters to combines, I feel I grasped the gist of modern farming technology. And modern it most certainly is. Any tractor that is connected to a GPS system and a satellite allowing it to drive itself, measure the topography of the land, know what land has already been planted, and stop itself on a dime is fairly modern in my book. But this comes from the girl that when handed the basic handheld video camera this morning, stared blankly for a few moments and asked how to turn it on…let’s just say that even after leaving it in the van twice and forgetting to video even whilst in my possession, Ryan somehow became the new videographer. To say that I am anti-technology would be a slight understatement. This trip to Ellsworth was supplemented by another documentary tonight by the name of Ocean Frontiers. I don’t have much experience with oceanography or ocean sustainability, but I am eager to learn more. I definitely have seen the ramifications of a lack of careful precautions taken to protect our oceans. I can still see litigation in my hometown from the oil spill in the Gulf. Today was quite the productive day, so I definitely look forward to a day of reflection and contemplation over our past few busy days.

The airline pretzels contained soybean oil.  And the cookies had soybean oil and soybean flour. Shocking? Not to me really. I’ve been aware of the corn and soybean infiltration into the food system for some time now. But before that? Absolutely not. Before watching Food Inc. for the first time, little more than a year ago, I was happily content to eat my food, buy my produce, and select my meat with little thought process beyond how good it was about to taste. I had no concept of seasonality or locality. As cliché as it may be, Food Inc. really opened my eyes and ears to the issues surrounding and within our food production system. I personally am not sure I agree with having 70% of the products in our grocery store containing corn and/or soybean components. Furthermore, when I personally think of the meat that I’m about to eat, I don’t think of chickens and cows fed unnatural feed shoved into tiny scantily lit dungeon-like warehouses. I’m no impassioned animal activist, honestly raging PETA activists bother me, I just like to enjoy my food. And honestly, how much of what were eating these days is food?

Each time I would tell people where I was going to “study away” on my May Experience, they always looked confused when I said “Iowa, to study on the Farm.” And when I mentioned farm politics, they almost always would reply back with “foreign politics?” Nope, and after some explaining, they stopped asking questions, and yet still looked pretty confused as to why anyone would want to know about all this. I, however, find it endlessly fascinating. From the hog barns down the road, to learning about the differences between the methods of GPS satellite tractor systems, I want to learn about it all. I look forward to the many seasoned experts that live this life and those that study those that do. Farmers and lawyers alike, I yearn to pick their brains and take a peek inside Iowa farm life and all that revolves around it.