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 such an awesome experience. First, the farmer’s market. Wow, it was so huge! I had expected maybe fifteen vendors only selling vegetables. Nope! There were hundreds of vendors down multiple streets selling anything you could think of! It was such a blast. I bought goat cheese, stinging nettles, fudge, and some cards to send to my parents and boyfriend. I really liked the atmosphere of the farmers market. However, when Hedley and I asked one man about his blueberries, he admitted that they were not in fact local but from Georgia. Doesn’t that defeat the whole purpose of a farmer’s market? My least favorite aspect was how rushed all the vendors seemed. None of them seemed like they really had time to talk to us so I did not get to ask very many questions. The woman that I bought the nettles from, however, was very helpful. She told me how to get the stinging properties out of them, what recipes she liked, and how to find recipes online. I do think that farmers markets are a great thing for people who want to eat locally. However, it can be difficult for those who are not financially well off because it was not very accessible. I assume that Des Moines is not close to everyone and that it would be expensive and time consuming for the average person to go there often. Further, why go there if a lot of the food, like the blueberries, isn’t even local? I think it’s a great idea, but it has some kinks that need to be worked out. I think there should be more to make it more accessible, and it should be stricter so that only locally made/grown products can be sold.

The Living History Farm was so much fun! I definitely enjoyed that experience. I especially liked the 1750s Indian time period (hence the name of this post: “Aha” means hello from a woman). It really put things into perspective that the past was not as great a place to live as I like to think. It actually seemed really hard and inconvenient. My favorite part was definitely the piglets. They were so precious! I worry about the runt, though. I hope he makes it…

Like the cherry on top of a sundae, I even got to ride this evening with Jocelyn and Sydney. And I get to sleep in in the morning! I am in such a good mood.

May 16:

Today began with a bacon taste testing between farm bacon and a general store bought brand. The general one seemed to be thinner and crispier and almost dissolved in my mouth, whereas the farm bacon was a bit thicker. We then continued our day with the reoccurring theme of a long car ride and visited Iowa Pork. There we were taught a new term farm-to-farrow where the farmer raises the pig from the beginning until market. Most farmers however no longer follow this practice, and just get pigs at a more mature age to raise until they are market ready. I had not heard of this technique before today, simply assuming they were all born and raised on the same farm. Also, Pork Quality Assurance was discussed and interested me. This is a policy that ensures the animals are treated to the standards necessary, but the results of the inspections are kept private. There is no pass/fail system here, just guidance on how to improve. I feel like this is not the best system because if I was intentionally breaking the rules, unless a fine, or shut down of my company was coming, I do not think I would change my ways. When I asked if somebody did need more guidance or the animals were not treated right would they ensure to go back and check it was changed? He says they would, but did not say there would be any punishment if they had not changed, just more vocal encouragement to change. I am not sure that is the right approach, I believe there should be fines, or a shut down of the facilities for improper treatment.

After Iowa Pork we ventured down to a biodiesel plant and learned the process that goes into refining it from soy beans. It was interesting that they use so many different parts of the bean and when they strip things like the oils they make them into other products so they are not wasted. Once we got home, I went for a run around the block surrounding the house. I was neat to pass the Greyhound farm because I have never seen one of those before and right across from it was a painted tire with the words “No Hunting” which I got a kick out of. When I got back I talked to Dalona for a little while about her experiences here on the farm and how she transformed from being a nurse to running the house. I asked her how she liked working at home and doing every meal and full of joy she looked at me and said, “I love it!”. Having her cook for us has been so amazing and such a treat. Its awesome how much she enjoys to cook, and she told me her family sits down to eat dinner and supper (as she calls them) together. That is something I will strive for in the future with my family because it is so nice just to sit down together after a long day. Dinners are one of my favorite things here!

This morning we went to the Iowa Pork Producers Association to learn about pork production in Iowa. I was excited to go because I had mostly only heard the side of those attacking the meat industry, and this was the first time I had heard anyone really defending any sector of the meat industry with extensive information about what happens in pork production. While they gave a very good presentation and tried to explain how the hogs were being treated humanely, it did not change my overall opinion on the pork or overall meat industry. I am still opposed to the production and consumption of meat products. What really concerned me was how Tyler Bettin talked about the hogs as if they were commodities, which is what can happen to everything, including animals, in a capitalistic system. While I understand this mindset for manmade products, I think that it can be dangerous for animals to be thought of in this way. They should be allowed to be their own autonomous beings and should not be viewed the same way that a t-shirt or other type of product would be viewed.

In the afternoon we took a tour of the Cargill Biofuel plant, where Scott’s girlfriend Becky works. While most of the chemistry that Kaitlyn talked to us about went way over my head, the things that I did understand about the production of the biofuel were very fascinating just because of how much complexity went into creating the product. I was also equally surprised by how many processes went into making vegetable glycerin, which is in many of the food products that I eat. Getting the chance to taste the glycerin kept things interesting for those of us who weren’t as scientifically minded.

Today was the embodiment of any and all definitions of “information overload.”  We began the day by traveling to Des Moines to meet with representatives from the Iowa Pork Producers Association.  They basically told us anything and everything one would want to know about raising and selling pigs in Iowa and the state and federal regulations governing the pork industry.  This was our first interaction with a large scale industry, and I definitely got that business vibe from them.  They weren’t as anti-activist as they were more dismissive of their claims.  Indeed, one of the facets of their mission was to help farmers counter activist claims and improve the public image of the pork industry.  The main issue is that normal, unsuspecting farmers without direct interaction with nationally-based activist groups will find themselves unprepared should an activist group or invested members of the public confront the farmer.  Additionally, the problem is worsened if these interactions disrupt the normal functioning of the farm.

That seemed to be a them for the day because we had a conversation about a similar subject over dinner.  According to Dr. HN, we will be having many conversations with both representatives of “big-ag” and farmers who share similar views.  Many believe (and I somewhat share some of this viewpoint) that organic and/or local farming for mass consumption idealized by advocates is not practical or efficient with today’s technology and practices.  It is a very niche market, and mostly for those with the capital to afford to produce or purchase those end products.

Next, we went to the Cargill soybean processing and biodiesel plant.  I won’t even begin to try to explain it, other than by this way: soybeans–>magic–>biodiesel.  If I had had some preparation before it, including diagrams and other visuals, I probably would have been able to understand more and be more involved in the process.  But that didn’t happen, so I was stuck staring at all this machinery, pipes, and nooks and crannies and thinking how awesome it would be to have a paintball battle in this plant.  (My engineer parents would be very disappointed).

Then, we finally made it home.  Two other students and I went to the Friest farm.  If they only had chickens and goats, they would essentially be the Old McDonald Farm.  They had horses, cows, pigs, rabbits, dogs, cats, and children (not for eating).  Mr. Friest only gave us a very brief rundown of his farm and opinions about things (literally, “about things.” He was all over the place), but we will luckily be going back soon for a more in-depth showing.

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.

Our visit to Iowa Pork Producer Association today was very…informative. The presentation was overall very thorough and painted a very pretty picture of the future of America’s pork production (PEDv threat notwithstanding). I found the language used by Iowa Pork to be very interesting. It was fairly consistent among the presenter and other people in the room that pork is “grown” and is eventually “harvested”, as if it is almost no different than planting and harvesting a crop. The purpose of the association, as far as I understood it, is for efficiency by placing the various producers involved in the pork industry under a single power. After hearing all the complexities involved in pork production it is not hard to understand why this would be the preferable way to organize. I found the breadth of the IPPA’s influence very interesting. For one, they seemed to control much of the education curriculum’s that aspiring pork producers undergo. I found it particularly interesting that a profit earning organization had the power to control not only curriculum, but a large amount of scholarships and grants awarded to aspiring pork producers. It seems that this would make it very difficult for someone who disagreed with the practices or principles held by Iowa Pork to exist, let alone become successful. On the other hand, the presentation made it seem that Iowa Pork has worked to help family farmers, made environmental responsibility and “stewardship” a priority, and diligently followed food safety and animal welfare regulations. Needless to say I did not walk out of there entirely convinced but really appreciated the educationally enriching experience regardless.

One of our many van discussions today during our long commutes was about the other Furman Mayx programs with a bit more wide appeal, such as Slow Cooking, Italy. I too would absolutely love the opportunity to eat and prepare good foods let alone in Italy. But when else would I get the opportunity to learn as much as I have about our domestic and global food supply. And I think Iowa will still give me the chance to do some cooking and experimentation with foods. Tonight was my first chance to do so and I started small by learning how to pan fry tofu using the same batter our wonderful “cook”, Dalona, had used to make her fried chicken. This really just made me eager to do some more adventurous cooking. Hopefully tomorrow’s visit to the farmers market will serve as inspiration.

Day three was packed full of adventure! We started out by going to Des Moines (which I learned today means some monks) and learning about the pork industry. I found this to be incredibly informative and interesting. I learned a lot about what it takes to raise pigs for meat, and it really improved my opinion of the industry as a whole. I figured that it would be inhumane, but it really seemed like the pig’s welfare was really taken into consideration.

Second, we went to the Cargill biodiesel factory. That was honest to God the worst smell I had ever smelled and detracted from the whole experience. I could hardly concentrate because I felt like I couldn’t breathe the whole time. I’m not much into science either, so I couldn’t understand a lot of what they were saying. Kris seemed to really enjoy it, though, and that made it worth it. Overall, however, it was not my favorite experience so far.

Last but definitely not least, I got to go to the neighbors’ farm and ride horses with their 13 year old daughter! I got to ride a sweet bay mare named Teeka and she rode Bootsie. Riding with her just felt like home, and I loved feeling free and being able to talk with someone who loved horses as much as I do. We got to run and, even though Teeka let out a few bucks, it was such a liberating experience. I hope that I’ll have time to get to go out with Sydney again soon.

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!

In case it wasn’t apparent from my last post, I have never had the patience or the mind for details or technical explanations of things. Stretching my mind in this way is actually something about the farm experience that I’ve been both looking forward to and dreading. That being said, today’s 5-6 hour farm safety session was very out of my comfort zone. But I really appreciated it especially since one side effect of my more abstract, non-detail oriented mind is that I tend to be a bit absent minded, and as a result clumsy. My parents have often half-jokingly said how this would get me killed or seriously injured some day, and after hearing some of the tractor accident horror stories I had to agree. The tip I found most interesting, and incidentally also related to my last post, was to “read the owners manual” of your equipment.

I have never read an owners manual in my life. I’m one of those many people who does not care how my “machinery” works as long as it does whatever its supposed to do in order to make my life easier or entertain me. But the idea of really understanding how things work, even if for the most part we no longer can work on our smartphones or laptops ourselves in a workshop (while the Denny’s of this world continue to push these limits) seems very appealing. This is true especially in light of my concerns, mentioned in the last post, about losing our ability to create things which has been such a defining characteristic of humanity throughout all of known history of civilization. I think that from now on I will try to make a conscious effort to read (or at least skim) the owner’s manuals of the various gadgets I own.

As the farm safety session progressed I was beginning to warm up to the world of practical concerns and technical explanations. When Kevin Butts began to talk about the ins and outs of Precision Agriculture my interest was piqued. I have always considered one of the most important questions agriculture must address to be how to go about feeding the 7 soon to be 9 billion people on earth. It makes sense that the answer to this would be to make farming as precise as possible in order to save time and money, use minimum amount of chemicals, and conserve product. While the technological innovations behind these advancements are something I find it easy to adjust to there are others that I found harder to accept. Particularly the idea of creating drones to kill individual weeds using a laser. While this would do something good in eliminating the need to spray chemicals on our food, I still am very skeptical of the creation of any technology with such capabilities. I am interested to see how the development of these new technologies play out and the ethical debates that will surround them.