Iowa was an experience. I think that’s the best way to describe it. It also was a lot—a lot of fun, a lot of food, and a lot of traveling (3700 miles). It’s also an experience that I will treasure and that has more fully shaped my views of agriculture. I know a whole lot more than on May 10 when we flew out.

I also made friends that I never would have made otherwise. Going into this trip, I knew only two people who were going, and not very well. Today, I have eight new friends, friends that I never would have made without Farm. For some reason, 4500 miles in a van can be a great bonding experience!

The real highlights of this trip are the people and the experiences, and they’re very unique to this trip in particular. For one, we stayed with host families. Morris, my host, was wonderful. He opened up his house to us, hosting our daily meals and chatting with us every night when we came back. Staci and Diane, who cooked for us, were also integral to our Iowa experience. They’re some of the nicest women that I have EVER met, and they fed us well. Some might even say too well. They also chatted with us about what we were learning, and they offered up their experiences with whatever subject we were talking about. Staci even planned our trip to the FSA office, where she works. The experiences were also unique to this trip, and they made it all the better. Where else can you meet with a Monsanto lobbyist, make farm fresh cheese, kiss a llama, and hunt morel mushrooms?

One of the things that made this trip different is that I graduated. HN likes to say that we could be in Helsinki or Italy, but we chose Iowa. For me and Hagen, the other graduate, we also could have been anywhere else. I have friends who went to Spain, or spent weeks traveling through California and Oregon, but I chose Iowa.

I chose Iowa because I knew that it would be more important and more useful than a traditional post-graduation trip. I’m very glad I did. Instead of eating and drinking my way through vacation, I learned a lot. I learned that the divide between “conventional” and “sustainable” farmers is incredibly wide, with few working to bridge the gap. I learned that there are several strategies to farm highly erodible land. I learned what highly erodible land even is. I learned that to make mozzarella you stretch the cheese for approximately forever. I learned what a CAFO is. I even went inside one. I learned that ag law is an important and growing field. I learned that sustainable means different things to everyone. Perhaps most importantly, I learned that water quality is a BIG deal and what the Des Moines Waterworks lawsuit was all about.

I wouldn’t change these experiences for the world, and I am grateful for everyone who was involved in this trip, from HN to our hosts and the people we met with. Thanks for making this happen, and maybe I’ll be back one day.

Sunday, May 28:

Today we did a variety of things, but one of the most educational was a lecture by Ben Knutson, who hosts Jessie and Josh and works at the USDA Agricultural Research labs near Ames. While we’ve gotten some of the bits and pieces that are part of the puzzle of farming since arriving, we haven’t really received a basic lecture that puts the puzzle together. Mr. Knutson’s lecture tied together what we’ve learned thus far, and helped the group more fully understand what we’ve actually learned as a more cohesive whole. (For our readers out there, this might also help you!)

According to his lecture, there are three main factors of influence that affect farming decisions: weather/climate, soil/topography, and management actions.

1. Weather/climate: composed of rainfall total and temperature. “Temperature” includes both the average seasonal temp and the frost free dates. This growing season affects the crops that can be grown in an area. For example, corn is grown in Iowa and has between 100 to 120 days to maturity. In contrast, cotton needs a longer growing season and needs 150 to 180 days to fully mature.
2. Soil/Topography: contains three physical properties: sand, silt, and clay. Additionally impacted by organic matter, CEC, and pH. Topography involves slope and length of slope. For example, the RUSLE2 equation (revised universal soil loss equation 2) is used to determine how vulnerable land is to erosion, and would be considered highly erodible land.
3. Management actions:
   1. Objective: maximize plant yield without harming the environment
   2. Three steps:
      1. Pick a crop for your soil and climate
      2. Choose a fertility program

• Keep a pest free environment

His talk also focused on measures used to reduce pests and “cover crop basics”

1. Measures to reduce pests:
   1. Healthy soil
   2. Pesticides
      1. Herbicides
      2. Fungicides
      3. Insecticides
      4. Rodenticides
   3. Mulch
   4. Fire
   5. Beneficial predators
   6. Mechanical tillage

2. Cover crop: plants grown after harvest and before planting
   1. Benefits: increased organic matter, decreased nitrogen leaching, erosion control, and weed suppression.
   2. Types:
      1. Oats
      2. Rye
      3. Canola
      4. Wheat
      5. Turnips
      6. Radishes

May 26, 2017

One of the most common phrases that we’ve heard during our time in Iowa is that farmers here are “feeding the world.” They have to increase crop yields to “feed the world”, corn is “feeding the world”, and over half of the soybeans grown in Iowa are exported to “feed the world.”

For me, this raises a lot of questions specifically, “Are Iowa farmers feeding the world?’ and “Do Iowa farmers need to feed the world?” I think its a good question to ask, and its one that isn’t asked enough. Local farmers are stockpiling past years of corn, hoping that the price will increase, and there’s less than 100 days until this years corn is ready to harvest. To me, that speaks of massive overproduction.

Today, we met with David Tierney at Monsanto, and Dr. Neil Hamilton at Drake Law School. They had very different perspectives on agriculture, especially big agriculture in the US. Monsanto is continuously working to produce better seeds, that mature faster, are less susceptible to pests, and are pesticide resistant. While this endeavor may be a worthy goal, it also has created massive overproduction due to several good seasons in row. It seems strange, but farmers often have greater profits during bad seasons. Its basic supply and demand: less supply equals higher price.

One of the themes running through both presentations was the inability to predict the actions of the current administration. A Trump presidency is an unpredictable presidency, and many of his actions have created potential instability for the ag community. To feed the world, Iowa farmers need to export their products, and they rely on the export market to a great extent. President Trump’s proposed border wall and withdrawal from TPP have created international uncertainty, and key export markets for Iowa farmers are looking elsewhere (not good!).  In addition to this, Dr. Hamilton found it unlikely that the 2018 Farm Bill would come about on schedule, or possibly even at all, due to polarization within Congress and a host of other, higher priority issues facing the legislation, specifically healthcare and tax reform.

In conclusion, the state of ag and ag policy in the country is a bit of a wash, and we really don’t know where the train is going. It’s a great time to be alive and study politics!

Today, we participated in a variety of activities. We started off our day bright and early with a breakfast of hash browns, sausages, eggs, and peach bread. It was delicious, and the peach bread was made with real peaches. One thing that’s certain about this trip is that we are well fed!

Following breakfast, we traveled to Clarion to visit the Hagie Manufacturing plant. Hagie is very interesting: they produce largescale sprayers, typically for co-op and major operation usage. According to their website,

A few of Hagie Manufacturing’s industry firsts include the invention of the four-wheeled Hagie sprayer, front-mounted boom, and a high-clearance Nitrogen toolbar. As the inventor of the industry, we have a strong responsibility to continue to be the leader in application. We remain committed to providing innovative solutions to optimize our customer growth. As a result, today our customers are capable of performing various full season applications with STS attachments, making it the most versatile application machine on the market. (Hagie Manufacturing)

At Hagie, I was struck by the scale of the operation. During typical demand, they produce one sprayer a day, and production can be ramped up during peak season. I also was struck by the size of the equipment. Hagie sprayers are truly MASSIVE.

Following Hagie, we made a pit stop back at central command for a lunch of walking tacos. Before this, I had never had a walking taco, so I’ll explain them to our readers back home: typical fair food, they are a combinations of Doritos and Tacos. Taco fillings are added to bags of tacos, so one can walk and eat. They’re pretty good, and I highly recommend.

After lunch, we met with local farmer Glen Hodenfield to broaden our knowledge of low till farming, CRP and CSP programs, and to finally understand how tiling works. He has a cool cat too.

To culminate our activities (but not our eating), we were allowed to visit an Iowa Select hog barn, or caepho. This was a pretty cool experience that I think someone else will blog about, so I’m going to gloss over it. However, it was also an experience that focused our seminar discussion, including questions of ethics, responsibility and attitude. Is it right to confine hogs? How can farmers separate their emotions from business, especially when animals are being slaughtered? What level of animal is acceptable to consume? (To contextualize this debate, we had pork chops for dinner). As someone who grew up raising beef cattle, I find these issues challenging. I eat beef. I’ve also eaten beef from cows that I have raised, and they tasted pretty good. Additionally, my grandfather was a butcher who cut beef and deer meat. We made our own sausage, cube steak, and hamburgers frequently when I was a child. I always knew that in order to eat beef, cow x would be no longer. Poppie even played a terrible prank on me one time and convinced me I was eating dog (I definitely was NOT, he had made deer stew).

For some people, this ethical dilemma is hard to overcome: how does one eat the meat of an animal that they have raised? For me, it is a simple fact of life, but is also an issue worthy of discussion and rife with alternative viewpoints.

Following our time at the hog barn, we played with tractors with Denny and then ate a lovely supper of mixed vegetables, pork chops, potatoes, and rolls. Finally, we closed out our day by working on our blogs!

We met with Representative Mary Mascher and visited the museum of natural history and Old Capitol in Iowa City this past Saturday.

The museum of natural history has several permanent exhibits, including the Iowa Hall, William and Eleanor Hageboeck Hall of Birds, Biosphere Discovery Hub, Laysan Island Cyclorama, and Mammal Hall. Displays in the mammal hall include a giant panda, antelope, whales, and musk oxen. Specimens from “aardvark to zebra” are represented, many of them collected by Iowa faculty and students.

The Iowa hall focuses on Iowa’s cultural and geologic history:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VykDv6mLGts

Exhibits include the Devonian Coral Reef, Ice Age Giant Ground Sloth, and Great Oasis. It was interesting to see the impact that early peoples had upon the state, and to brush up on my history. Agriculture in Iowa truly began 1100 years ago, during the Great Oasis Period.

Great Oasis villages were a setting for great progress. Crops improved; corn, beans and squash were harvested in surplus; food-storing methods were improved; permanent houses were built; and social organization became more sophisticated. This is what made “village-based life possible.”

I really enjoyed visiting Old Capital. It was my favorite part of Iowa City. I especially enjoyed looking at the early development of governance Iowa, and the impact that this governance and social structure has had upon the sociological norms of the state. Iowa was admitted to the United States as a free state, and the social values of entrepreneurship, land stewardship, and independence continue to permeate the social structure of the state, especially in rural farming communities like the ones that we are spending most of our time in.

I find these values, and the impacts that they’ve had upon society very interesting. Iowa farmers are very independent, but they are also incredibly reliant upon the federal government. The farm bill is incredibly important to farmers, who rely on the yearly payments it provides, as well as subsidized crop insurance. This balance can be delicate. Nobody wants to have the federal government telling them what to do on their own land, but it is necessary to be successful.

Iowa State STRIPS Project

What are STRIPS? If you watched the video that I linked above (watch it, it’s pretty cool!) you might know that STRIPS stands for Science-based Trials of Rowcrops Integrated with Prairie Strips. STRIPS is a research project through Iowa State University, located at Neal Smith Wildlife Refuge that is investigating the usage of prairie strips in farmland conservation practice, specifically for row crops. The row crops typical in Iowa are corn and soybeans. The mission of the STRIPS project is to “strive to more fully understand the assembly, management, function, and value of prairie strips; to communicate our results to diverse audiences; and to assist others with the implementation of prairie strips on farm fields.”

We visited on of the STRIPS research plots located on the Neal Smith Wildlife Refuge and met with Dr. Schulte-Moore.

The vision of the STRIPS project is:

A future in which prairie strips are integrated with other agricultural conservation practices to foster the production of healthy food and sustainable fuel, and the protection and maintenance of clean water, resilient soils, and diverse and abundant wildlife and beneficial insects. We regard our project as an important way to make farming and environmental quality harmonious. (Iowa State University)

Dr. Schulte-Moore was very convincing. Her data met scientific standards and the results were compelling. According to the project, prairie strips work, and by converting farmland into prairie strips of as little as 10% was responsible for reducing erosion by 93%. Additionally, they reduce nitrogen run off by 84% and phosphorus run off by 90%.

Since the STRIPS researchers have 10 years of data from small plots on the Neal Smith Wildlife refuge, they are expanding their experiment to over 30 farms in the Midwest, with the majority located in Iowa. On approximately half of these farms, they are conducting bird counts and animal data, and on the rest they are conducting Nitrogen and erosion testing. Since they have only conducted this phase for two years, they have not published data from this stage yet.

One of the benefits of prairie strips is that they are cheaper than comparable conservation practices. For example, “financial analysis demonstrates that the cost per treated acre of prairie strips is highly affordable compared to many other conservation practices. Depending on opportunity costs, the cost per treated acre ranges from $24 to $35”. Additionally, farmers can apply for cost-sharing programs through the USDA.

One of the common themes of this course is the division between “conventional ag” and sustainable ag.” Because of this, I especially enjoyed the STRIPS project, as it was working to make conventional ag sustainable, at a lower price.

Today was a very varied day. We had a large variety of activities: we ate breakfast, we toured the Monsanto Huxley Learning Center, we met with Iowa corn, and we split into groups to make cheese, artificially inseminate cows, or ride along with planting/cultivating.

At Monsanto, we discussed a variety of agriculture techniques and planting. They’re currently focusing on merging science and data science to maximize returns for farmers. I felt that the presentation was very high on the marketing end and low on the data. They had a variety of stations with focus areas, including seed science, genetics, traits, agronomy, and research. These stations focused on the seed science, while their other hallway focused on precision engineering, including variable rate planting, singulation, and depth.

Following Monsanto, we visited Iowa Corn, and met with three people there, including Elizabeth Burns-Thompson, T.J. Page, and Dr. David Ertl. Iowa Corn two wings, the corn promotion board and the corn growers’ organization. Iowa Corn has federal priorities, including environment, ethanol, trade, and safety net. They also have state priorities, including conservation/water quality, livestock, renewable fuels, research, and taxes. Iowa Corn also has a PAC, funded separately from the Corn Promotion Board and Corn Growers Association.

After Iowa Corn, we drove back to Radcliffe and split into different groups. One group went to Lost Lake Farm, where they milked cows and made cheese (I wasn’t a part of that, so I’ll let them expand). The other group rode along with farmers who were planting and field cultivating, including Denny Neubauer, Denny Friest, Brent Friest, and Glen Hodnefield. I went with Denny Neubauer, and we field cultivated for Caleb Knutson, who had broken down in his field. Following this, Sophie Friis and I participated in artificial insemination of cows with a local farmer.

On Friday, we picked up rocks. Yeah, that’s right: rocks. Picking up rocks, or even just rocks, isn’t something most people think about on a daily basis (unless they’re @Jessie Wheeler). Farmers though, they think about rocks pretty often. Rocks can cause some serious damage to farming equipment, especially harvesting equipment. While the Neubauers do have rock insurance, it’s not something that they want to use: It would cut into the already small margins that they rely on for success.

I’ve picked up rocks before. It’s just something that you do on a farm. In my case, we picked up rocks to keep my arena clean (generally an area is a flat area where you ride a horse to practice things). However, as a group we were/are inexperienced rock pickers, so guess what we did? If you guessed that we did it wrong, you’re right. Generally, rocks bigger than the size of softballs are dangerous for equipment, and one leaves the smaller ones behind. We picked up ALL the rocks in a really small area, rather than sweeping the entire rock belt.

In a way, picking up the rocks symbolizes our entire experience thus far in Iowa. It’s a big jump for our group, and while we might think we know a little about farming, we just see the big, flawed picture that we have previously been presented. Conventional farming might rely on equipment, but it’s still helluva lot of hard work, hard work that rock picking hammered home. It also hammered home the variability of land in Iowa and the fact that farming hinges upon getting the smallest of details correct. The land where we were picking up rocks, affectionately known as The Rock Belt, used to be a dump, and we found a variety of older farming detritus, including old coke and tonic bottles. Now, with the advancement of technology and the reduction of commodity prices, all land matters, and what used to be a dump is now part of productive acreage. Additionally, the smallest of details matter, i.e. rocks. To be productive and to make a profit, everything has to go right. The rocks have to be picked up, the nitrogen has to be stabilized, it rains enough, it doesn’t rain too much, it rains at the right time, there are no pest or fungi issues, the equipment doesn’t break down, the commodity prices are high enough, and many more. One or more of these may go wrong throughout the year, and it might be okay. But it also might not, and that’s a scary prospect.