When I signed up for this course I had no clue what type of experience the program would produce and to an extent, as I later found out later, neither did Dr. HN.  As this was only the second year of the program, Dr. HN added a number of new aspects to the course, many of which he had not experienced himself.  This created an environment in which all the students were able to learn alongside our professor adding a level to education that I had never known before.  The amount of information and unique experiences that we were exposed to was truly incredible and I am very thankful that I had the opportunity to come along for the ride.  I believe that I am coming away from this course with a good understanding of many of the aspects that make up agricultural policy and practice in our nation and worldwide.  I never would have thought that there was so much to farming in addition to the amount of controversy and passion that people involved in agriculture deal with and possess.  Coming away from the course I believe that our nation needs to further utilize the many agricultural practices we have available in order to create the most beneficial system.  I would tend to agree with Robert Paarlberg’s assertion that society needs genetically modified crops to sustain its population, but GMOs should be just one of the tools that society can apply along with organic and local practices that promote region food growth.  As a result of this trip, I plan to dive into a vegan diet on my return to Connecticut.  I am curious to see how the new diet will affect my health, but I am also curious to learn if I have what it takes to stick to such a radical lifestyle change for a period of time.  I am ready to return home, but I will never forget the people and experiences I witnessed this May.  Thank you to those who made it all possible.

Our last day in Iowa was indeed last but certainly not least.  We eased into the day with a casual tour of the World Food Prize building, located in the former Des Moines City Library.  The historic architecture combined with the lavish refurbishing done to the interior of the building make it a must-see if you happen to be in Des Moines.  The World Food Prize is awarded yearly to an individual that has helped make significant advances in agricultural practices aimed at eliminating world hunger.  The prize and the building are in honor of Iowa native Norman Borlaug, whose work on wheat production is credited with saving over one billion lives in what is known as the Green Revolution.  Borlaug does have some critics that claim that his Green Revolution damaged native traditions in areas like India.  They compare Borlaug’s hybrid seeds to those that are entering India today, the GMO seeds of international companies such as Monsanto.  Critics say that the imported seeds make poor farmers dependent on the overseas company, a dependency that they say allows these companies to control the lives of the farmers.   After our tour we sped off to the BioCentury Research Farm, a facility designed for agricultural research on various topics such as biofuels and plant breeding.  Our time was spent hearing about a surplus of complex sciences, most of which were far over my head, but I came away with a general understanding of the fascinating innovations that biochemists and bioengineers are making in their efforts to develop new energy sources and viable uses for biomass materials.  The teams working at the BioCentury farm have a clear economic base by which they guide their research.  They strive to make fuel and energy alternatives, as well as additional byproducts that have the chance to provide financial gain.  Scientist can develop as many innovations as they please but only those that can withstand the market will have a noticeable impact on our lives.  These sciences will be very relevant in the near future as the price to harvest petroleum becomes higher and higher.  We then proceeded to conclude our day with somewhat of a long awaited grand finale, a visit to Monsanto.  With all the recent buzz about the company due to the GMO labeling debate and the “March Against Monsanto” which took place nation wide last weekend, the timing could not have been better.  Much of our discussion with the Monsanto representative focused on the labeling issue and the reasons why the company and many other organizations are against mandatory labeling of GMO products.  Monsanto believes that according to the FDA requirements for labeling, GMO products do not require a label because they are considered “not significantly different” than other versions of the crops from which they branch.  A label would imply that GMO products are either better or worse than the organic version, and for the majority of the American public, a label reading, “Contains Genetically Modified Ingredients,” might as well be a skull and cross bones.  In 2012 the state of California voted on GMO labeling and resulted in no policy change, but the poll itself has launch nation wide discussion for legislatures this year.  On Thursday, the United State Senate voted on GMO labeling and overwhelming shot down the labeling campaign in a vote of 71 to 27.  This federal ruling prohibits state governments from making their own decisions about the policy and set back GMO labeling advocates for the time being.  Little do most people realize, but GMO ingredients have been present in the vast majority of their foods since the early 90s, but nonetheless, labeling these products as such would most likely have a drastic affect on the sales of grocery stores, farmers, and biotech companies alike. 

Among the titans of commodity cash crops lies a small vegetable farm, the Table Top Farm, run by a two young families who have an optimistic vision in a tough world of big agriculture.  The partnership between the Corbin and Gran families resulted in the creation of the farm in 2010 with the goal to offer fresh produce to customers through the CSA program as well as direct and wholesale transactions.  The farm is growing year by year as they are expanding their customer base and investing in new equipment and facilities.  The joint farming families, one of which live in a rented house on the farm site, do not own the land they are farming, but instead rent it and pay a yearly fee to continue their operation.  At this point in time, TableTop Farm does not have the funds needed to purchase the land but hopes to someday have the opportunity to do so.  I had the chance to view the farm’s five-year business plan in which the families laid out the direction they plan to take the farm and their projections for how they believe the business will operate financially.  One aspect of the plan that stood out to me was Table Top’s projected percentages of income from their CSA program compared to income from direct sales.  It showed that in 2011 the company planned to earn seventy-five percent of its income from the CSA program and the remaining twenty-five percent from the direct sales category, which includes the farmers market and wholesale income.  By 2015, they projected that these percentages would switch, representing a huge increase in direct sales side of their business.  This will require the company to make valuable connections to local restaurants or grocery stores by which they would sell larger quantities of their products.  As Daniel Imhoff notes in his book, Food Fight, farms such as this receive about two percent of Farm Bill subsidies, whereas the meat and dairy industries receive sixty-three percent of subsidies.  The 2008 Farm Bill did commit one billion towards support efforts for specialty farms, which would include vegetable, fruit, nuts, and legumes growers, but the disproportionate subsidy pie remains.  The acknowledgment of our nation’s obesity problem has spurred the push for more affordable fruits and vegetables so it would not be surprising to see further funding for farms such as Table Top in the new Farm Bill.  If the government can provide better incentives for farmers to grow the healthy foods that our nation needs, instead of inedible cash crops that are required to first be processed or fed to animals for us to obtain nutritional value, we may be able to foster healthier diets for our nation.

Certainly one of the more interesting and thought provoking trips that we experienced this month was our day spent at the Cory Family farm in Elkhart.  We started the morning off right by learning how to milk goats with three of the Cory boys as knowledgeable instructors.  Although, the shining star of the group was Dr. HN, who was able to recall some his childhood experiences with milking cows.  The day continued as we learned about the Cory’s chickens.  The family orders a number of baby chicken eggs on the verge of hatching.  The little chickens are kept indoors until they are developed enough to thrive in the outdoor climate.  The chickens are then moved to a section of pasture in which they are kept in large movable pens that provide cover from rain and other adverse weather.  These pens house about 80 chickens in a single living space allowing the chickens to freely move, eat, and drink (feed and water dispensers are kept in each pen).  Twice a day the pens are moved so that the chickens have access to fresh grass, which adds another aspect to their diet.  The chicken pens continue to be moved twice a day until the birds reach a market weight at which they are removed from the pens, butchered, and packaged.  This entire process occurs on the Cory farm.  In addition to these chickens, the Corys keep a number of hens, from which they harvest eggs from for their personal consumption.  Goats, cattle, and sheep are also raised on the farm.  These animals are mostly grass fed, differentiating them from the conventional CAFO livestock.  The Corys sell their meat products at a premium price to a small, but growing, consumer market.  Robert Paarlberg in his book, Food Politics, references this type of niche market and attempts to explain the loyalty that some consumers have to this organic, local, and slow food movement.  He describes part of the attraction to this market as its difficult exclusivity, by which people take pride in the relationships that they develop directly with the farmer providing their food.  The Cory family farm definitely falls into the category that local food advocates so actively support.  And as we found out, the exclusivity of the market is not the only reason people buy the Cory’s meats, they also taste great!  For the first time, I had the opportunity to feast on some goat meat, and now I can personally vouch for the premium quality of the Cory’s products.

If there’s one thing that I’ve learned from my time in this state, it’s that Iowans know a lot about corn.  And our trip to the Pioneer seed company proved to be no different.  I was greatly impressed by the company’s vast facilities and came to better understand the processes Pioneer uses to produce its products.  One part of Pioneer’s operation deals with creating better hybrid crops, which is essentially a more complex version of selective breeding involving no genetic engineering.  The company prides itself on this aspect of their business as they claim to have superior advancements in this field compared to their competitors.  But Pioneer also provides GM products, which go through significant amounts of testing by the USDA, EPA, and the FDA.  The process by which Pioneer develops and tests its genetic traits can take as long as 10 to 12 years to be ready for the consumer market.  Currently the company is working on crops that conserve water more efficiently making them more resistant to drought-like conditions.  The future of the biotech industry seems to very bright as the company is rapidly growing and hiring new and larger staffs each year.  Concerns about the safety of GM products are hotly contested.  Advocates of the food safety claim that there are no scientifically valid studies done that prove any harmful effects of GMO products, whereas non-GMO advocates claim that simply because there is no evidence against their harmful effects does not mean that they do not exist.  Some believe that the world’s population could already be experiencing adverse side effects from GMO products and that they are not being recognized as such.  Another negative aspect that the non-GMO side warns against is the loss of biodiversity in our food supply.  Miles and miles of corn cover the state of Iowa and generally, all this corn is biologically the same or very similar.  This could be a potential problem if a new disease were to develop; the disease would be able to easily spread from crop to crop potentially destroying a large portion of our nation’s food supply.  But GMO crops are in the ground today for one primary reason, the world’s population.  Genetic engineering of food crops is necessary to obtain high enough crop yields to support the growing population.  And as we have heard on this trip over and over again, we must be able to “feed the world.”

Today we had the pleasure of visiting the Ubben family farm near Aplington. Tom Ubben and his wife, Sharon, were nice enough to show us around their farm ground, which was home to a plethora of animals that they raise.  The Ubbens, unlike most conventional farmers today, rely on the methods of the past to raise their animals.  Their cows and pigs, freely roam a grassy pasture unlike the concentrated feeding lots that dominate the market for these commodities today.  Having been to the Friest hog barn, which follows the conventional style with its farrowing and gestation crates, it was interesting for me to be able to compare the alternative system of the Ubbens.  The Ubben’s pigs are farrowed in small tin huts that are scattered around an open pasture allowing the sows and their newborns to freely move about.  The pigs are then moved to a smaller pen-like area, still much larger than the pens of the Friest farm, in which they have access to indoor barn shelter and an outdoor area where the feed is kept.  The two systems that I have had the opportunity to see are extremely different, and I do not have a problem with either one.  I do not know if the pigs were happier in one type of system or the other; I do not believe that attempting to measure the mental happiness of an animal is something that anyone can do with any level of accuracy.  By disregarding the animal welfare aspect of the two pork production systems, the consumer’s choice becomes based off the quality of the product and its price tag.  Tom Ubben claims that his pork is of higher quality than that of the pork produced in today’s conventional system, but he must charge a higher price for his products.  As in most things, it comes down to money. Is the consumer willing to pay a premium price for the Ubben’s Niman Ranch pork or will the public prefer the more affordable price for the pork of the Friest’s and many other CAFOs (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation)?  The fact of the matter is that Tom Ubben’s pork appeals to a smaller market of consumers whom either have concerns about how hogs are raised in CAFOs or view the Niman Ranch as higher quality meat, but this market’s main distinguishing factor is a higher amount of disposable income with a consensus that the pricier product is well worth the extra cash.  I’m sure everyone would love to be a member of this small niche market, but its price point is likely beyond that for many individuals and families around the country. 

Staying in Hardin Country Iowa, our group has had plenty of exposure to the conventional style of agriculture with its large tractors and specialized equipment.  But with our visit to the Wallace Center Farm in Orient, we got a taste of a different kind of agriculture.  After a delicious lunch prepared with organic ingredients grown on the farm itself, we headed to the fields where we were met by Mosa Shayan, who was our guide into the world of small-scale organic farming.  The Wallace Center embodies a sustainable model in which the farm grows it own crops and uses them in the small restaurant located at the same location.  Later that evening we watched the popular documentary Food Inc. of which I had seen parts before but never the entire movie.  From the parts of the movie I had seen before, I thought it was mostly about the agriculture industry’s mistreatment of animals, but I came to realize that the documentary’s theme is much broader than that.  The main aspect from the film that I took away was our country’s addiction to corn and how it is somewhat disorienting the way that our agricultural system works.  When almost ninety percent of the products found in an average grocery store either contain some sort of corn product or require corn-based feeds to produce them it raises concern about the degree to which this overwhelming dependency has grown.  Corn is an extremely useful plant and can be used for a wide variety of purposes, most importantly to produce our meat and to sweeten our food and drinks.  These two uses for corn have made the food in United States more abundant and more affordable.  These seem like great outcomes and for the most part they are, but the main side affect of this type of a food system is a growing rate of obesity, which in turn leads to a nation with increased risk for heart disease and diabetes.  Foods that can be cheaply produced due to the abundance of corn and its uses are unhealthy processed and fast foods.  The money that many Americans save on their food is lost by our nation’s health care system.  The group affected most by cheap, unhealthy food is the lower class that has less to spend on their diets and therefore rely the fast and processed foods because they can buy more with what they have.  The movie calls for somewhat of reconstruction of our food system in which we can make healthier food more available to everyone.

Moving forward with a devout faith in science.  This is the direction in which the Iowa AgriBusiness Association seems to be moving.  We had a chance to meet with Joel Brinkmeyer, the President of the association and talk about some of the issues that his organization is facing in its lobbying efforts.  President Brinkmeyer conveyed to us that the association’s focus at this time is on clean water and making sure that Iowa farmers are doing their part to reduce nitrogen run-off.  This effort echoes a familiar theme to that of the movie we viewed, Ocean Frontiers, which highlighted the specific efforts of voluntary stewardship programs within Iowa that are devoted to reducing the effects of the state’s agriculture practices on the hypoxia zone in the Gulf of Mexico.  The nitrogen fertilizers that farms use in their soil is often washed away due to rain and erosion where it ends up traveling down the Mississippi river and out into the Gulf.  The high amount nitrogen (and phosphorous present in the eroded soil) encourages an abnormally high amount of algae growth in turn lowering the oxygen content of the water at the mouth of the Mississippi.  This lower oxygen content in the water creates a dead zone in which little to no fish life can be supported.  The stewardship programs encourage farmers to use techniques such as cover crops to reduce soil erosion and nutrient run off.  They also fund projects in which farmlands are converted into wetland wildlife preserve areas.  These wetland areas help filter out some of the nutrients of the fertilizers as well as pesticides that are common in runoff water.  The voluntary programs are an attempt to prove that Iowa farmers can be relied on as responsible caretakers of the earth and soil that they depend on for their livelihood.  If programs such as these prove not to be effective, it is likely that future government mandates could force farmers to better adhere to conservation efforts.  But referring back to the opening comment about the direction that the AgriBusiness Association is taking–it is clear that a reliance on scientific innovation and the advancement of technology are the methods that this association believes will be the most beneficial and effective in terms of addressing our country’s agriculture needs.  They see precision agriculture and the use of genetically modified crops as the way to increase production to a level that will sustain the world’s population in addition to using those technologies to boost environmental conservation efforts.  This view is in direct contrast to those who believe that our agricultural system should return to the methods of the past and adopt smaller scale operation in a push for local food by which we could possibly lower our total carbon footprint with less dependability on technological advances.  Whichever model will be the best operation or if a combination of the two will be most beneficial is unknown, but the Iowa AgriBusiness Association has chosen its side.

Our visit to the Ellsworth Community College in Iowa Falls proved to be a highly informative one.  In my opinion, the most interesting subject material covered by Professor Kevin Butt was precision agriculture, which involves the use of GPS as well as other tools to improve the efficiency of the farming operation.  This may include, but is not limited to, the collection of crop yields, the number of seeds being planted, the areas already planted, and the amount of pesticide required to get the maximum yield (based on soil composition).  Of course, the coolest thing is that the tractor drives itself based on GPS . . . some tractors even turn around by themselves and don’t require a driver!   I was really fascinated by the innovations that have been made by the companies involved in manufacturing farming equipment.  Especially interesting was the way that computer technology is being incorporated into the tractors, combines, etc.  The John Deere video that Professor Butt showed us about the future of farming and how Deere products are envisioned blew me away.  In the video, John Deere creates an image of farming in the future that is highly computerized and attempts to eliminate the factor of human error by it with the pinpoint accuracy of Deere’s computerized equipment.  It seems that the responsibility of the farmer is diminishing to that of a supervisor who oversees the operations of drone-like machines, which do the actual work.  Technology is leading the farming industry in a direction that is focused on eliminating the role of the farmer, and it makes me wonder, when will this technology reach a point at which essentially the entire human aspect is eliminated?  It’s almost like the movie Terminator, in which human innovation creates a society completely based on computer operations and results in a war between robots and humans over control of the planet.  I doubt that advanced tractors will start to attack their farmers, but if the farming industry is becoming this reliant on computer technology, where are other types of industries pushing their technology?  As impressive as the advances are that the farming industry is making, it does make me worry about society’s ability to use the technology it creates in a way that does not come back to haunt it it in the future.

This morning the group ventured to the Wallace Centers of Iowa’s Des Moines location, which functions in the former house of the famous Iowa family, the Wallaces.  Before today I had zero knowledge of who the Wallaces were or what their degree of importance was to the state of Iowa and the nation.  The family member that attracted the most attention was  Henry A. Wallace, who, as we learned, had a rather successful political career serving as the US Secretary of Agriculture, Secretary of Commerce, and as FDR’s Vice President.  After viewing the film about his life, I came away with an opinion that marked him as a sort of a role model.  From what I observed, he served the country with a deep sense of personal responsibility that emphasized a true commitment to the welfare of the common people.  This commitment to the common people served as one of the main highlights of the film, but from what I could tell, it was genuine.  Henry A. Wallace did not fit the mold of a standard politician, and I believe that’s what made him perfect for the jobs and tasks he pursued; he had no personal or behind-the-scenes-agendas, he only sought to use the powers of his positions to bring forth what he believed was positive change.  It is a shame that I had never known his name before today, but I have come to admire his efforts to promote peace as well as his character.

After supper this evening, we watched another film, Forks Over Knives.  It presented, at least to me, rather shocking findings about the effects of the Western diet on our society’s  health.  The film advocated for a “whole foods, plant-based diet” that eliminated dairy products and meat, claiming animal-based diets increased the rate of cancer, heart disease, and obesity.  From the data provided by the film, this conclusion seems well supported, and made me question my own diet.  I would like to try to implement a plant-based diet in my own life to witness the effects for myself.  I do not necessarily think that the diet is something that I absolutely need to immediately endorse and follow, but I am curious to see how the diet would affect my body.  One thing that stuck with me from the film was a comment that one of the doctors made about milk.  The film had referenced the national government’s support of milk as nature’s perfect food, but the doctor remarked that a cow’s milk may be the perfect food for a baby calf, but why would that translate to human beings?   Why would drinking the milk of another species be beneficial to us?  Humans have their own version of this perfect food; a mother’s breast milk is very important in the healthy development of her child, but when did it become logical to drink the milk of another animal, and especially why should we continue to drink milk long after we are babies?  I love milk, but I did think that this was an interesting point.