With all this corn talk naturally comes the subject of ethanol. Especially considering the price of gas at the moment, its no wonder ethanol is a popular topic. So far, almost every group we have visited has either mentioned ethanol or made an argument regarding it. Coming into this trip, I’ll admit that I knew very little about it, especially the fact that it comes from corn. Our trip to Lincolnway Energy certainly answered those questions, but it also raised some new ones. To make ethanol, corn is highly processed through fermentation, chemical processing, and distillation to produce a 200 proof alcohol that can be rationed with gasoline to produce fuel. Today, most ethanol is used in the form of E10 (about 10% of the gasoline is comprised of ethanol), and some as E15 (about 15% of the gasoline is comprised of ethanol) for cars made after 2001. Here in Iowa, it is also common to see higher blends like E85. Many opponents in the food v. fuel debate argue that using ethanol is taking food out of people’s mouth to put it in our gas tanks. But, we learned today that our recent increase in ethanol use has not affected the amount of corn used for food use.  Our corn supply has continued to grow exponentially to keep up with the ever-increasing demand. We also learned more about the options of utilizing cellulosic ethanol as a biofuel as well. Cellulosic ethanol is produced from plant matter like corn stovers, switchgrass, and wood chips. While it would seem that these products would be found plentiful in nature and human trash, the problem lies with the availability of these corn stovers here in Iowa. While Iowa does not lack in corn stalk waste, the removal of these stovers would be depleting the soil of nutrients, and thus requiring more nitrogen to be added to the soil during the next planting season.  Futhermore, removing other cellulosic resources from the environment can be indescribably damaging to the ecosystem and biodiversity of the land. Despite these issues, we should be utilizing these alternate sources of fuel energy and taking advantage of ways to stretch our fuel use. In our Imhoff reading, he suggests that simply by becoming cognizant fuel consumers and car owners we can improve our fuel efficiency. He claims that “sensible driving” and regular car maintenance can improve the estimated miles per gallon anywhere from 1.0 to 6.6. 

I think by now everyone on this trip knows I’m not a particularly cheery morning person. For me, a coherent Haden is solely reliant on a large intake of coffee. But now, I think we’ve found a new source of morning motivation for me. Groggy and sleepy-eyed, we arrived at the Hill’s property. Upon seeing those precious Greyhound puppies, our level of alertness certainly rose. We helped the Fiscus girls make their rounds of feeding and playing with the dogs. Needless to say, it didn’t take long to forget our 6 AM wake up call.

From there, we returned to spiff ourselves up for our later meeting with the Soybean Association. We spoke a lot with them on the subject of local foods, which is a concept I have been very interested in, and have heard so much about on this trip. Their concept was quite different than any I have ever heard, and raised a few concerns in my mind. Hellmans Mayonnaise and McDonalds, they argued, could be considered local food to Iowa. Soybeans, after all, were mostly all grown here, so, of course, it could be considered local. I was immediately skeptical of their definition of local food, if it included Hellmans and McDonalds. Doesn’t the transport of these soybeans to various manufacturers in far away locations only to be stripped of their soybean form negate their status as a local food?

Another claim was that super markets contributed fewer carbon emissions than farmers’ markets, thus making them more economically sustainable. They believed that all the farmers individually driving their products to market causes a heavier carbon footprint than massive food producers shipping their food product over large distances with multiple other products. But I don’t accept this view of local foods. While yes, the individual farmers making their own trips does cause quite the footprint, I am of the understanding that these huge mass food producers and transporters sending their product all over the country and back again most definitely could give the farmers a run for their money. From the huge tractors in the field all the way down to the semi that drops the food off at Walmart, surely that has to make quite a carbon footprint of its own. To believe that supporting local farmers and businesses is actually more detrimental to our environment than shopping at a supermarket will require much more evidence to convince me.

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.

Sustainability has become a hot topic, as the field has grown rapidly over the past decade. Farmers began adopting sustainable practices to ensure the survival of their farms for two reasons: honor and avoiding contact with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) – a US Federal Government agency whose purpose is to protect the environment. We were able to meet with Iowa’s Secretary of Agriculture Bill Northey, who elaborated on why these two reasons are important to the average farmer.

Most farmers tend to group a visit from a federal agency with a bad day. Mr. Northey stated that by adhering to EPA regulations, farmers are able to stay out of one agency’s way. I mean if you know someone could make your life miserable, you should probably do everything in your power to avoid them.

The next notion caught my attention: The honor of farming. This phrase just has a certain ring to it, making you feel like a good samaritan every time you say it. Repeat it to yourself and notice how you probably sounded like a superhero fighting for justice. No farmer wants to be the reason his family farm fails.  As Secretary Northey noted, each year, he awards certificates to families who have kept the farm in their family for 100 and 150 years.  Northey thinks that Iowans are deeply motivated to do the right think to keep the farm in their family, and he believes that Iowa’s farmers will get behind the nutrient management strategy.   By being sustainable and participating in Iowa’s Nutrient Management program,  farmers can prevent their soil from eroding, reduce nitrogen and phosphorous leaching into the rivers, and keep the EPA from imposing top-down regulations on nitrogen run-off. And in so doing, they are protecting the family farm for another generation.  Most of these family farms have been around for years and important milestones are only a couple years or even a decade or two away. By adopting a sound environmental plan for their farms, farmers will be able to reach this milestone. Farmers will receive a small plaque commemorating them for their hard work, but why is this plaque so important?

While the plaque itself is not important, it represents a sense of unity among the family members. Take for instance my teacher HN. After his father passed in 2010, HN could have easily sold his shares of the farm and acted as if the farming side of his life had never occurred. Four years later he is running a program to show the significant strides farming has made since his “glory days” of farming as a kid. The part you don’t know is that HN was not an avid farmer growing up, telling us he wanted to escape the farm life as soon as possible. However by keeping the family farm running you can not help but notice that part of this decision was to honor their late parents. To me that is the honor of farming, showing that the notion of family is still on the forefront of people’s minds. Some people say the notion of family has been retreating over the past couple of decades, but here in the Midwest it is stronger than ever. For my classmates and me, we do not need to look far for an example of this. As HN, his brother Denny, sister Nancy, and nephew Scott continue the strong tradition of family farming, you can tell the strong family effort has kept this family farm running. Whether it is being sustainable, nothing will stop a family from honoring their late loved ones through their farming. I believe family is the motivator to the honor of farming.

Have you ever gone to the supermarket searching for a bottle of shampoo to find 30 different varieties displayed on the shelf? Unfortunately for you the overwhelmed feeling you experience does not stop with just shampoo–Dupont Pioneer develops a very large number of seed varieties. This is nothing negative towards Pioneer, as Pioneer engineers products specifically towards helping a crop survive in its own environment. By producing more products, are larger companies more susceptible to mistakes?

People insist that introducing genetic traits to commodity crops that can combat insects or weeds are not only endangering the crop itself but also the customer consuming the crop. While there is an obvious need for large-scale companies – such as Pioneer – to carefully analyze its products before selling them across the nation, I believe the use of genetic traits should not raise concerns. The reason for concern should rest with the size of an outbreak that could possibly occur. Are there enough regulations and checks in place to prevent these catastrophic outbreaks?

Most people can recall the incidence where all Peter Pan Peanut Butter was recalled because of trace amounts of salmonella contained in the product. After this incident people became weary of food protection agencies, believing that large companies did not have to follow the regulations implemented by the government. After meeting with Dupont Pioneer I can safely state that large companies can not easily circumvent regulations applied by the government.

Dupont Pioneer has three different agencies to test its products and assure their safety to the public. These three regulatory agencies – FDA, EPA, & USDA – all have different regulations that Pioneer must follow. Also these products are not the projects of college students that are hastily thrown together the night before. Dan Hansen – our tour guide at Dupont Pioneer – informed us that it took 10 to 12 years for a product to make it to the market. During this period many possible products are eliminated by one of the three different agencies.

While no industry is perfect, large companies do adhere to the regulations put forth by the government. The fear perceived by the public that large companies can evade regulations put forth by the government is completely wrong. These companies want to produce the most effective and least harmful products possible, and to do so they must follow the government’s regulations. If a company like Pioneer had a track record of manufacturing harmful products, consumers would not trust its products in the future. To profit more from their products in the long term, Pioneer and other companies will strictly follow regulations by the government. These regulations will minimize, but unfortunately not eliminate, any “human error” that might occur in the development and production phases of bio-tech crops.

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.