After meeting with representatives of the Iowa environmental council (an NGO uniting multiple groups towards major environmental goals in the political atmosphere) today I saw a second point of view compared with the one I was given in the Paarlberg’s food politics book. The book explained that the runoff of agricultural lands was decreasing and that nitrogen is the main runoff issue. Policy analysts at the council, however, told us that phosphorus and soil runoff are still significant issues, and that nitrogen runoff is a serious and complex issue. Iowa is one of many states feeding into the Gulf of Mexico and has little to no significant regulation on fertilizer inputs for crop land. The only regulation that seemed to be definitive was that water bodies used for drinking water must be below a certain level for nitrates. I knew that agriculture runoff was a complicated issue, but I never realized just how complicated. The biggest initial issue is that its source is nearly untraceable–it’s non-point water pollution  If rain carries excess nitrogen from a farm to a river, how could tell the origin of the nitrogen? It’s incredibly difficult and expensive to do so. Not only that, but nobody likes regulations dictating what they are able to do especially people like farmers in many areas who have lived doing things their preferred ways for some time. Then there’s the fact that if you invest in a method that costs some amount (which some conservation efforts would) and others don’t, you put yourself at a financial disadvantage. Since all efforts are currently voluntary most people are left with this scenario. What people forget to factor in is how many others are affected by their decisions on their property in this issue, some of the benefits of improved methods (e.g.,. runoff of nutrients is not absorbed into the land). If there is runoff, you are pouring your money into a lake and washing it away. Using the proper fertilizer amounts will save the farmer money, and it will protect both local and downstream downstream environments.

Everyone in the group is discussing some chunk of the organic/local vs conventional agriculture movement today. My topic is the yield difference between the two. To begin with, the yield in organic farms has been found to be roughly 25% lower than conventional. This comes as a meta study (research compiling many different articles) from Stanford University and has limitations, admitting that the lower yield varies by plant, by area, by practices, etc. Two papers that help explain this pretty well are: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v485/n7397/full/nature11069.html%3FWT.ec_id=NATURE-20120510 and http://holisticmanagement.org/blog/organic-v-conventional-the-yield-debate/ . Unfortunately, I should immediately say that anyone looking into this needs to look at both sides of the argument to really understand it as few people do so anymore. Secondly, readers should also remember that every writer, scientific or otherwise is biased in some way, including my own, derived from being a sustainability sciences major.

I tried to find individual case studies showing both conventional surpassing organic and organic surpassing conventional (or at least comparing) and was on able to find the latter. There is not a lack of data, it is a lack of good Google skill in myself. The articles I did find are http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=4431524 and http://d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net/ofa/pages/98/attachments/original/1391404186/Organic-Agriculture-Can-Feed-the-World-OFA.pdf?1391404186 . If nothing else these articles should all show that the argument between conventional and organic is more complex than one is better than the other, always and by a lot. There are arguments about the slow improvements in soil using organic (thus slowly improving yield), increasing investment in learning and educating best practices for organic as was done for conventional, and organics superior ability to withstand weather extremes which are expected to be more common through global climate change (if one agrees to that. All I’ll say on that topic is that the http://keelingcurve.ucsd.edu makes it seem clear there are drastic increases in co2 since the industrial revolution). Even accounting for all of these conventional agriculture may produce more and a main argument to support it is that the high cost and slightly lower output of organic is not enough to supply the world’s growing population. The world is expected to reach 9 billion by 2050 and either continue growing or level off there, and the US is a major food producer that trades and donates (USAID) large amounts of food to other countries. Can we produce the amounts needed to supply both ourselves and those we currently supply internationally (if recommend glancing over my blog yesterday to also see the animal aspect to this, especially important as the world develops and tries to move towards the high protein western diet)? Both conventional and organic can be large scale even though few think of organic as such, and both can use pesticides with organic being limited to natural ones (caffeine, bt, sulfur). People who say either is outright better are simplifying things too much, so please stop and think about what aspects each side brings to the table and at what costs. Personally I feel both are valuable and necessary moving forward and perhaps when both improve in their sciences one may become obsolete, but right now we need to ensure we can produce and people desire both cheap and high protein food which requires quantities that leave us relying on conventional. We also have slow growth in organic and sciences behind this movement with an easier low cost input system that can be adapted to poorer areas (i.e., developing countries) and which builds nutrients in the soil instead of stripping them. I believe organic or something similar will grow and needs to for long term agricultural sustainability and feasibility, but at this moment we can’t survive a sudden switch to all organic and shouldn’t try to take that course. I want organic or an idealistic organic to be the solution, but that will have to be a slow move if a complete shift is ever be possible.

Today we read and heard about the Green Revolution which I briefly mentioned in my post yesterday. I was actually a bit mistaken, and the first Green Revolution was in Latin America (wheat) and Asia (rice). Our book by Paarlberg was clearly geared more pro-Green Revolution, but still put forward the arguments that paint the Green Revolution in a rather dim light. Going to the World Food Prize, however, treated Borlaug and the Green Revolution as near heroic acts that saved billions. The revolution certainly produced more food and reduced hunger, but some of the underlying principles had issues and the gain in food was not earned without giving up something.

My first and only real exposure to Borlaug was in sustainability, and it was not a significant explanation. He was a man who developed seed varieties that require inputs of water and nitrogen, but produce significantly more per acre. He also did his best to spread these and food itself to developing countries and won the Nobel peace prize for his work. My exposure was primarily his theory that more yield would occur per acre so the amount of agricultural land in use would decrease and price of food would fall. This idea failed, since the yield increased and price decreased, but the amount of land has continued to increase. Borlaug did do a lot and helped improve the amount of food available worldwide, but by relying on such things as pesticides and high inputs we put ourselves into a delicate situation of changing the system for food and risking other things along the way.

Nitrogen runoff is the one everyone talks about. Nitrogen is sprayed into fields to get the corn to grow well, but sometimes either at a bad time when it can’t be well absorbed or more than the soil/plant can absorb. Although the book doesn’t fully explain the problems associated with, sustainability courses have. 1. The nitrogen will wash away either on the surface or in groundwater until a lake or the ocean, in either case causing massive ocean plant growth for the same reasons it causes corn to grow. This makes an algal bloom.

Algae grows much faster than fish numbers so nothing eats all of it, then the algae dies and uses up some oxygen in the process. With the huge amount of algae dying, it actually makes the water oxygen limited or devoid of oxygen so fish and most species can’t live in it, which is why they are called dead zones (the majority of the Gulf of Mexico being the most notorious one). 2. Some nitrogen doesn’t wash off, but instead evaporates and this is a problem because it’s a GHG 300 times as potent as CO2. Given that (and many other issues involved such as larger farms instead of many small ones) shows that the green revolution had its issues. Combine these with the social issues that were caused in some areas where the Green Revolution occurred (greater inequity and social disparity problems) and no one can say that it was a perfect change. The World Food Prize definitely made it seem so while the book acknowledged there are issues about this method.

I think compared to my essays before this I’m going to be a bit brief oddly enough because far too much happened to explain it all so I’m going to focus on just the one thing that stood out most to me between DuPont Pioneer seed company and the Corn Growers Association meeting. Of course my science leads me away from the more political and frustrating/confusing information we got from the Iowa Corn Growers Association and toward the hard sciences from seed engineering. I’ve heard about GMOs for a while, and didn’t really know much about the varieties that can be made and how inaccurate it is to lump all of them together as one entity. First of all, we learned that these companies still use old hybridization methods too; in fact, they’re usually quicker from research to market since theirs a whole lot less regulation. This method would be growing plants with different genetics and breeding the two together to get the best of both worlds (theoretically), but with the added science of looking at the DNA level to make sure that you understand your plant. We know enough about genetics to know some key genes that affect properties and can see what those are in the plants that are hybridized so even non-visible traits like water efficiency can be achieved (Duponts new AQUAmax fits this bill).

GMOs are a short cut in a sense that takes a normal plant embryo and forces the desired gene in there. Surprisingly they can literally force it in with a pressure based gun… But they more frequently use bacteria that ordinarily break DNA to cause diseases for the job. It just involves modifying the bacteria to insert the desired genes instead of inserting their disease genes (sounds scary but it’s more common than you’d think, we do the same to get a lot of pharmaceutical materials. Why make it when you can trick nature to do it safely for a fraction the cost). Then you have a plant with the desired gene, but where that gene came from can be widely different. What it’s for also causes complications because one gene is to allow the plant to incorporate a small amount of pesticide within it so we don’t have to spray as much (not hypothetical scenarios here) and another one makes the plant produce more vitamins to combat malnourishment in the third world (golden rice) and yet another one lets the plant tolerate even more herbicide so we can spray harsher chemicals for weeds. Those are all very different scenarios and different ethical battles that you can decide whether you believe justify GMOs. Additionally some GMOs don’t actually insert anything, they just change what the natural DNA does; soy for example has been made to not express 1 or 2 genes so that they no longer produce trans fats. They didn’t add anything, they just “turned off” a gene. Some genes that are added are from the same plant (corn to corn), and some come from another source in nature (bacteria to corn). These take much longer to hit the market since they require extensive testing for safety and allergens, but are a bit more genetically precise. Clearly after all that you can’t really say all GMOs are one bad or good entity and you certainly can’t say seed companies making them are purely bad for doing so since they’re also making hybrid varieties. It’s all based on what the market demands. My personal views on GMOs was that they’re understood and created in a controlled environment, produce good results, but may have some long term issues for health or the environment that just haven’t yet been tested for by my knowledge. It’s a shortcut and a direct change to a natural product, both of which usually come with some cost. More importantly to me is that you and I likely eat GMOs often and just don’t know because they still don’t need labeling at all in the US. I don’t know and didn’t hear much about why not, but I find that something I personally find concerning. Far more so the fact that these seeds are usually patented and sterile, and I have heard of court cases against farmers for GMOs they didn’t buy, ending up in their field. Being sterile just means farmers have to buy the seed each year, which creates an issue if they become the norm in the developing world (as it would legitimately increase crop yields dramatically) where most farmers couldn’t afford to buy them. This is referred to as the 2nd green revolution, the first being our move to high input, high yield, large scale farming to the developing world. These issues are far more important ethical concerns to me at least than the actual act of modifying an organism’s genes directly and something I wish I heard more about, but certainly feel would have either been a big argument or would have been an inappropriate thing to bring up in their company.

Well today was a pretty busy, but great day. It started late compared to the past few days since us students remained at the house while the Neubauers went to church. Once they came back we had a number of things happening at once with some folks going to the neighbors to help with horses, some helping on the family farm with rocks that needed to be removed, and some going to the planter once rocks were pulled. I started with the gator (a golf cart without the windshield and a good bit more power) and rock moving. What I didn’t know at the time was that between the rain and cultivating large rocks tend to be brought to the surface so that there’s a constant need to remove them. Some of these were far too large to be picked up by hand, so I was actually with Scott Neubauer in the loader to get the large boulders. The loader looked like:

It was able to get any of the large rocks up and out of the farm so that the equipment wouldn’t accidentally run into it. Not only did I get to help use the loader by pushing the rocks on and latching it, but I also rode in the loading bin as we went rock to rock! We finished getting the main problem rocks out of the way, so planting could start, So we all went back to the house while Scott’s father called for the next round of seeds for the planter, so we tried to load a seed bin which is able to bring a large amount over at one time. We actually were called to bring over some seed in bags first so that they could keep going, but by the time we got back Scott had finished loading the seed bin, and I rode with him in his truck as we fully reloaded the seed bin with soybeans. He said they can plant probably 30 acres with a fully-loaded planter, and they plant 150 thousand beans to an acre so that gives one a sense of how many beans it plants. It was interesting to see the non-GPS guided way of running the equipment, too. The way to keep things even was an extended arm with a thick steel wheel on it to grind a mark in the soil about a half length past the planter, so if one follows the mark then you’ll plant the entire area. While planting I was able to talk about some farming ideas; how deep do the planters go, how its set to a different plant, how to decide soy vs. corn, etc. Scott was giving real answers about what he has to go through, and how to understand it, which is what I was really hopeful to get with this trip. After planting, I came back for just a second before running the gator next door with the HN’s great nephew and niece to supply part of the group at the Friests with some snacks. We saw the animals there one more time before heading back and then I joined a group at Dalona’s house to help with her gardening.

Dalona’s house was incredible with a number of cherry, pear, apple, and peach trees, at least 3 decent-sized plots for veggies (hand planted and managed gardens so under an acre sized), lavender and decorative flowers, cows, chickens, and cats. While there, I talked at considerable length with her husband who is an agricultural scientist at ISU. We all worked on planting tomatoes, weeding, feeding the cows, and collecting fresh chicken eggs. All throughout it I was asking about how they do things there and learning about the economics and politics from both Dalona and her husband, as well as how it’s physically done. They both admitted that without his paycheck from the university there would be no way to sustain that type of living since it simply doesn’t provide enough income. Even though it’s a small operation it’s still something that they easily admit requires near constant attention and wouldn’t be there without their love of it. It’s also very interesting to see the different plants possible due to the climate as some of the first plants I learned about on the Furman garden were Southern ones like okra and collards, which aren’t known here at all.  Iowa is the land of rhubarb, and it is completely new to me. Adam, Cecily, and I tried some raw rhubarb which surprisingly tastes like a celery version of a warhead (the super sour candies) and was really enjoyable to chew on while farming. Once we came back we enjoyed Dalona’s cooking skills with chorizo sausage lentil soup, which was a great introduction to lentils since I’d never had the soup (to my memory). We essentially just discussed tomorrow’s plans from there before heading to bed. It was great getting to do so much, especially while getting to talk to such nice people who were willing to put up with my over-inquisitiveness.

Today was my first day at a farmers market, and I was considerably surprised at the size of the one in Des Moines. We saw just about every vendor there and talked with a few folks about what they were selling, even buying our lunch and some snacks from them. Interestingly at this farmers market, at least, not all the food was local and some of the students were actually told that items from other markets were repackaged for resale. Equally surprising, to me, was that many farmers did not sell organic, cage free, hormone free, etc. types of food everyone associates with farmers markets. Many people sold normal, conventionally produced goods. I was surprised that it also seemed a good number of people actually came to the farmers market just to sell cooked goods or even artwork like metal sculptures. After going to the farmers market, we went to the Living History Farm, for a walk through Iowa farm history.

The walk in farm was a historical tour with farm houses from the 1700s to the 1950s. We got to learn about oxen (which apparently are any cow trained to be a work cow), see some of old Iowa, and understand a bit of the progress in agriculture. While in the 1850s town we even bought a few bottles of Sarsaparilla and sassafras drops. It was really interesting to see farming from the past, but honestly it was a bit difficult to grasp for me just because the tour system was almost tuned to average life of the era more than the farming life making it a lot of information to take in. Lastly we spent some time with the Neubauers on the farm cultivating the soil. It was great getting to hear some real talk about some of the politics in farming as well as a bit of the decision making, primarily how much is left to a bit of guess work since weather and price fluctuations are so difficult to estimate. I look forward to getting to talk with Scott, Brent, and/or Denny more about how farming operates in a lot of different ways and enjoyed getting a small bit of conversation while riding in a tractor for the first time.

Today was by far our most informational day with the pork industry in the morning and the biodiesel plant in the afternoon. Luckily it was also the first day we had with a free time slot that allowed some of the group to go to the nearby Friest farm to meet Brent, help tend the horses, etc. The first thing that I learned at the pork industry was that pork is now rarely raised from birth to market and is more often purchased as young pigs and raised to market instead. A lot of the time people will raise someone else’s hogs under contract so that there’s no real risk involved since they’re paid upfront. Although there’s easily over a hundred more things I could say about the hog industry talk after a 3 hour meet, I’ll leave it to the part that I paid the most attention to which was the environmental side of things. This was a meeting involving conventional or industrial hog farms (including CAFOs) and of course they want to give a positive view, but I feel like they had a good argument in the area in many respects. Working in concentrated areas has ethical implications (although keeping the animals comfortable and safe has taken a high priority in everything we’ve seen), it does come with some immediate environmental benefits. If it’s concentrated, then it needs much less land. Since transportation and machinery are the largest GHG emission involved in the hog industry concentrating it also decreases the greenhouse footprint and although not specifically explained, it also reduces the water requirements of the operation (water 41%, land 78%). The one concern I have with this is the possibility for a similar situation as a city’s footprint. In a city there is less land needed for a person to live, but land is needed to raise their food, store their food (groceries), mine their resources (including the coal or oil to transport the food the distance to the city), etc and they actually end up needing much more land to support them.

One of the major environmental problems with these types of operations is the manure becomes a waste product which does nothing but give off some of the compounds (some being GHG’s) which ordinarily would go into the soil. In Iowa they don’t just have large scale hog farms, but also have large amounts of crop farming, including a large amount of the feed corn and soy. Thanks to this, most pork farms here are able to sell their manure for fertilizer to the point where almost 1/4 of all fertilizer needs are met by manure in Iowa. This solves this problem and keeps the system of nutrient delivery back into the soil with the manure instead of treating manure as a waste. Although I’m sure there are either environmental concerns involved with concentrated hog farms, this is the biggest one I thought of and they completely eliminate the problem here in Iowa. The other problem I’ve heard has a lot less to do with the concentrated aspect and more to do with culture. Just having such large amounts of meat when the average person needs only a fist sized piece of meat (or protein rich veggies) is a large waste of resources. This is because of the 1/10 rule which roughly explains that for every 1 lbs of food one eats, we get about 10% of the energy within it (energy being nutrients, fats, etc which we can use to make energy). So every pig goes through this too and thus has to eat 10 lbs of corn to “grow” a pound of meat for us. This causes the problem of a less efficient diet where we need to grow more crops not for people, but to feed more animals to feed people. Not as much of a concentrated pig farm problem, but something along the same line of thought since you theoretically need to grow ten times the food if everyone went from strictly vegan to strictly carnivore diets. This applies with all animals including fish, so the higher on the food chain you go the less overall efficient you’re technically being (ie eating a plant you get 1/10 the energy it got from the sun, eating a pig you get 1/10 the energy it got from corn which was 1/10 the energy the corn got from the sun which leaves you with 1/100 the energy from the corns energy now).

After our long meeting at the pork industry we went to lunch and then the biodiesel/soymeal plant. Being a chemist I really enjoyed this tour as I had heard of many of the compounds before, even working with a handful of them. I was also interested to hear the plant’s main purpose was initially to crush soy into feed mix and the oil released is just a byproduct. Some facilities of theirs turn it into soy cooking oil, but this one turns it into fuel in a process which also produces glycerin, a compound used in cosmetics, food, and medicines. Most facilities like this focus on producing the biodiesel and will leave the glycerin crude and sell it to a refinery whereas this plant goes through the extra effort to fully process their glycerin, often buying glycerin from others for processing. Although I doubt many are interested in the chemical process like I was, but they essentially take the oil and remove the impurities (phosphorus, excess water, etc) through methanol washes and a few filtration runs. Glycerin is what’s left when the oil is processed and can then itself be separated just based on density (think olive oil on top of water) to be purified and sold. They also recovered as much of the material including water and methanol to reuse in their facility as possible, at least to the point where it makes economic sense to do so. I found it really cool I suppose to be able to understand not everything, but the gist of the information from a large chemical facility based on coursework and a small bit of research! Especially knowing some of the processes because I had done things like GC (gas chromatogram which essentially heats up what you put in it to analyze what was there to test for impurity) or salt washes. I doubt most others were very interested in this topic mainly because it was just a very technical tour, even with my background of chemistry a lot of it was so specific to biodiesel that I couldn’t keep up, but I love chemistry so I was kept interested the entire time. I have some personal concerns about turning food products into fuel (very simply the idea of all those nutrients literally being used to burn in an engine instead of going back to the soil for more plants to use), but in this facility the meal is made for farmers and this oil is just a side product which would otherwise be wasted. Many other smaller biodiesel plants I’ve heard of rely on used kitchen oil for their source, which is taking a waste and making it a valuable commodity. Things like this are what really interest me, that blend between an environmental effort (both reducing waste and making renewable fuel) and chemistry. In sum, I had a fun day as a nerd.

I’d like to add that I got to meet the nice neighbors the Friests, but I feel like this is already long enough so I’ll simply say I enjoyed their company, conversation, hospitality, and many pets.

Today we just got to Iowa, luckily it was a short ride and some pre-visit talk with a native born on the flight actually got me a bit of a preview of some things to come. We immediately had lunch at a “green” grocery and eatery that was delicious and gave us all a chance to talk a little about what would be going on for some real conversation between all of us here. The rest of the ride up to the family farm was interesting since we got to see the grid pattern that the more rural areas are built in, the large fields of recently planted corn, and a few interspersed wind turbines which we were told are not all local (those at the family farm are actually owned by a Florida group).

Once here we all unpacked and relaxed a bit. Almost immediately afterwards though Dr. Halva-Neubauer’s brother arrived and gave us the tour around the farm. The house itself is generations old, nearing its 100th year with lots of renovations since, and it was really impressive to hear how many of the buildings were built by him or his grandparents. After hearing about the buildings we actually got to see some of the impressively large equipment, and we were told they more than triple in size when actually unfolded to plant/apply the herbicide. Afterwards we had a brief house tour with Dr. Halva-Neubauer himself before Dalona (a neighbor friend and our chef) had finished dinner. Lastly we ended the day with a movie about the Iowan and US Vice President Henry A. Wallace. The quickest way to sum up the video is that it was admittedly focusing on the good side of an idealistic man who spoke his mind in politics, worked for the benefit of the common man, advanced agriculture while in and out of office, and tried to support the environment too. He seemed to have been a great man who wanted peace and was the rare idealist who can actually accomplish what he or she believes to be possible. So the first day has definitely been nice, and I feel it will be great getting to see this area with some others interested in some of the same topics. Off to a good start so far, and I’m definitely feeling interested in seeing what we start doing now that we’re officially in the course!

After an early wakeup morning, we had a nice group breakfast of granola courtesy of Dalona. Without much waiting we headed off to Ellsworth college to meet Dr. Kevin Butt to talk about farm safety. Once there we learned a few pieces of information such as the average Iowa farm size is 850 acres.  Then we delved into safety. The points of the discussion that really stood out to me were how high on the list of dangerous jobs farming ranks and the risks heavy equipment bring. Farming is the number 4 most dangerous job in America, and we saw a number of videos showing why. One of the biggest dangers was large equipment that runs the risk of angry drivers when being driven on the highway.  Such equipment can also strike electrical wires, fast moving parts which can snag someone’s clothing, and, if not careful, they can even flip. One of the more frightening, but positive stories we saw was that a man was walking on the corn in a grain bin while emptying it, and he fell through the corn hollow formed as it was being drawn out of the silo. He luckily survived, but few do, and Dr. Butt explained that emergency workers called to situations where a person is trapped into a grain bin usually are recovery situations rather than rescue ones. Although it was meant to scare us a bit, Dr. Butt left us with the memo that being aware and thinking through what your doing will prevent many accidents.

Next we talked about pigs and safety within pig farms, the industrial kind not the outdoor kind. Hopefully I’ll have more to say about that soon, but most of the talk was about how to get the job done while still keeping the pigs as stress free as possible. Our last topic with Dr. Butt was precision ag, which is exactly what it sounds like. This involves machinery to monitor inputs or outputs and even satellite-guided machinery to keep things as straight and efficient as possible. Some are even unmanned! Although not really marketable yet, he even discussed the possibility of drones to get these satellite images or even to do the planting or precise herbicide applications. This whole system is to improve efficiency by keeping everything precise and well monitored. After a short talk about the difference between red, blue, and green (Case, Kinze, and John Deere brand equipment) we left Dr. Butt for dinner at the Wallace house. This dinner briefly mentioned Henry Wallace, but primarily focused on local foods and serious conversations at the dinner table. Our focus was farmers markets, which I unfortunately have no experience with, but we talked a lot about the local food movement which I’m a bit more knowledgeable about. After a three course local dinner we finished up and headed back for the house and ended the night.

Tomorrow is supposed to be the biodiesel plant which will bring up my chemistry knowledge and interests so I hope to have a bit more to say then (hopefully in English and not tech-talk)!