Shout Outs to the Family and Friends

Memorial Day in the Garden City/Radcliffe area is commemorated by services at the Garden City, Zion Lutheran Church, and Radcliffe cemeteries.  Members of the local American Legion conduct each service, and this year, Farm's Sam Burgess, offered to serve as the trumpeter.  Sam is an accomplished music student; he holds a music scholarship at Furman, and he spent two summers with the Boston Crusaders, a drum and bugle corps.  All was well until, I discovered that I locked the keys in the car that contained Sam's trumpet.  All of this was discovered at the very last minute, so the ceremonies at Garden City and Zion were conducted sans trumpet.  Due to the resourcefulness of community members, however, two trumpets were produced by the time of the final ceremony at Radcliffe, and Sam's beautiful rendition of "Taps" and "The Star Spangled Banner" sang out above the Radcliffe cemetery.

So much of this trip has been a time of discovery and rediscovery.  Today, I learned that veterans of both the Confederacy and the Union are buried in the Radcliffe cemetery.  The amazing sacrifices of so many were made clear by the moving memorials at all three cemeteries.

There were three stars today--Dennis Friest, our neighbor, Denny, my brother, and my friend, Morris Stole. Herr Friest  secured trumpets by the time we arrived in Radcliffe; he also found a way to conduct the ceremonies in Radcliffe and Zion in a seamless manner; Denny, my brother, finally unlatched the lock to my car door.  There were times when it looked like it might require breaking a window, so I was thankful that a less invasive method worked.  Morris took Sam and me to the Zion and Radcliffe cemeteries.  The folks out here live in a community, and I was reminded of that fact, again.

Feeding the World?

Commodity agriculture farmers and organizations note that organic farming methods cannot feed the world. To save the starving and hungry, we must have embrace an agriculture that produces greater yields on fewer acres of land.  To accomplish this, they say, we must have GMO seeds that have greater yield rates and pesticides/herbicides that kill off everything that may have a negative impact on crop yield. Organic would not be able to produce sufficient yields so that no one goes hungry.  No one wants to feel like they are causing people to go hungry, so they would obviously side with this idea if they were given no other option. This clever argument appeals to our humanity.

I, however, must disagree. For example when the group was listening to presentations by the Corn Growers Association, the "feed-the-world" argument was brought up, but all the while I was thinking how a good chunk of the corn produced now goes to ethanol or some sort of fuel product. All the corn fields that we have seen are filled with corn that is not edible; that corn goes to making ethanol and making feed for stock animals. While you could argue that corn eventually feeds the world because corn feeds the animals, and humans eat animals or animal byproducts, remember that the people who are starving and hungry don't usually eat all that much meat. Meat is expensive, and the diet of the poor and hungry consists of staple foods usually consisting of different grains and vegetables. However, another argument could be that corn produces high fructose corn syrup that goes into a lot of different consumable items, and, while that is also true, I can imagine due to the fact that corn syrup is a sweetener these items would not be of any good nutritional value and offer no major sustenance for the body.

Patrick Westhoff, author of The Economics of Food, brought up the interesting fact that while the percentage of the world's undernourished population has declined over time, the number of hungry people has remained consistently high. According to a FAO report mentioned in the book, the total number of hungry people might exceed 1 billion in 2009. Food production has increased drastically, so one would think that this would cause a lower percentage of hungry people. While the answer to this riddle is not so simple, it is interesting to ponder how the corn industry is heightening production in the name of saving the hungry; however, the number of the hungry people is still increasing.

So in the end, while the corn association claims to be feeding the world, it is clearly not succeeding. Again, solving world hunger is not simple, so I don't expect it to be done overnight. However with that argument being repeated over and over again, I would expect that the production of corn would have lowered the amount of hungry people by at least a few thousand persons. I admit I am somewhat biased, considering all the farm lands I have seen up to this point that plant GMOs and apply pesticides, have not produced a substantial amount of consumable produce. But one must wonder why the people who produce corn that is inedible by humans make the case for feeding the world so often. 

Dust in the Wind

I don't know how many of you will recognize this song by Kansas, but it has been stuck in my head for the past week. The scary thing is that the more I think about the song the more emblematic it becomes of my stay in Iowa. Feel free to look up the music video on YouTube, but I provide the lyrics below:

I close my eyes, only for a moment, and the moment's gone

All my dreams pass before my eyes, a curiosity

Dust in the wind

All they are is dust in the wind

Same old song, just a drop of water in an endless sea

All we do crumbles to the ground though we refuse to see

Dust in the wind

All we are is dust in the wind 

Oh, ho, ho

Now, don't hang on, nothing lasts forever but the earth and sky

It slips away, and all your money won't another minute buy

Dust in the wind 

All we are is dust in the wind

All we are is dust in the wind

Dust in the wind

Everything is dust in the wind

Everything is dust in the wind

The wind

Besides the blistering winds in Iowa, this song reminds me a great deal of the farmers and corporations that I mentioned in a previous post. The farmers that we have met have a dream--be it small or grand, but they have a dream nonetheless. Many just dream of being able to sustain their family; others wish to affect society by “feeding the world.”  Many of the farmers though are so obsessed with getting the biggest yields and getting bigger, better, faster that they refuse to see how it is affecting the soil. The soil is a living thing, and their soil is dead from all the tilling, pesticides, and insecticides. All the soil is just dust in the wind, blowing away due to its lack of moisture and body.

I feel like a lot of the farmers forget their soil has become dust for a reason, because of the way they are treating it. They just put fertilizer on it hoping that a small band aid will fix the problem. Again, “ all we do crumbles to the ground though we refuse to see."  Another main problem with this is that the farmers are not thinking long term. I believe most aren’t thinking of how their soil will be 10, 20, 50 years from now when they are dead and gone. The fertilizer is just a temporary fix.  To have sustainable soil you have to nurture it and keep it alive. Fifty years from now when we are just dust in the wind, the earth will still be here and will be in whatever condition it was before they put fertilizer on the dust. Their livelihood will be blown away. It’s a rather dismal prospect, but it can be changed.

I don’t mean to be harping on farmers, but we have to remember that when we are all dead and gone, the earth will still be here and our children or relatives will have to deal with the consequences.

To smell Guanxi (connections)

Scarcely a day has passed since yet another trek across Iowa has transpired. Bodily aches, cramps, and pains have vanished although joints, tendons, and ligaments have long memories and cringe at the very thought of the unpleasant experience. In spite of such physical tribulations, the previous journey was successfully completed as will any future voyages be it brief or arduous. However, being squeezed and pressed together like extracting olive oil from hardened seeds is implicitly connected to these three weeks along with all the other excursions and memories. Any personal space issues have been neatly resolved or, at least, compressed and excreted as sweat (hence it cannot be sold as 'cold pressed'). Digressions aside, the undercurrent of all these events is omnipresent yet is a mere wafting wind only seen when it moves a wind turbine: nonexistent but deeply significant: the interconnectedness of reality.

Although many instances of the underlying theme of this trip, if not reality itself, has presented itself through the guises of guard llamas with poor dental health to ballads lamenting government influence in agriculture with lyrics ranging from complete isolationism to misguided, ill-fated attempts at helping farmers and the environment utilizing direct payments, subsidized crop insurance, and other interventions. Every farmer has a song that is quickly performed on cue it seems; however, these songs share the very same hidden current that has defined this trip whether unintentional or otherwise.

One of the more obvious manifestations of the rhythm of reality was on Galen Bontrager's farm, located in Eastern Iowa, far from Des Moines. Whether it was impaling chicken carcasses on PVC pipes or walking in a healthy pasture filled with a variety of grasses, herbs, and greenery not found in a typical suburban lawn, interconnection avoided explicit mention but was vitally important. As briefly alluded to, there was a llama, who guarded the sheep, and a dog who protected the chickens; both animals were ingrained into their respective herds, being an inseparable aspect of the operation. Personified by the smell of the soil, which actually smelled of dirt and not the devoid, scentless substance that many believe it to be, interconnection made an unmistakable surface appearance in an artfully mundane guise that would have been easily overlooked.

Being one of three characteristics of reality, interconnection is vastly significant but generally overlooked and swept under the rug along with impermanence and discomfort, the other two key defining aspects (hence society's innate obsession with death, pain killers, and the like), much like smelly soil. Reality is similar to a spider's web: a vibration on the far corners reverberates throughout the entire web itself, no matter how trivial the stimulus (Internet memes spring to mind). However, since all beings live with the web constantly vibrating, we become desensitized to its motions, ignoring and suppressing the jarring feeling to maintain some sort of sanity, trying to stay afloat like a mere leaf weathering the rapids of a nervous river current. Due to this feigned ignorance, we become inward looking creatures, focused upon the immediate perspective nearest to us: the tidal waves we cannot ignore (hence why the death of a single person is a tragedy but the death of millions is a statistic as Stalin once proclaimed). Though this mentality saves us, it is only temporary as each strand of the web of reality cannot be independent or it would fall to the abyss. Through the guise of culture, we are told two values: one of the self-made millionaire who is happy and surrounded by material goods and a seemingly conflicting story of the selfless person who is happy due to charitable acts and the like. Although these two ideals seem at odds with one another, interconnection, along with the other two characteristics of reality, declares them to be non-dualistic. Reality is a bucket with a hole in the bottom filled with sand that when left alone does not drain but when more sand is added drains to equilibrium. The sand acts as its own plug much like the two ideals preached by culture: a balance is acquired that sustains this non-antagonistic conflict and any other (even the disbelief of the three aspects of reality!).

Diversions aside, interconnection has been an omnipresent shadow cast by multiple sources but usually overlooked unless it is directly overhead. Though there are few certainties, the web of the way displays this fundamental nature of reality through wind turbines, pig semen, and a host of other forgotten aspects. To look for interconnection is a simply complex task, requiring an openness to its vibrations everywhere they originate from the smells of the soil to foreign sweat pressed up against another arm. Many have become dislocated from these sensations or categorize them neatly in little boxes to be revealed out of context later on (which is the reason why my posts have disavowed pictures).

If anything, I have acquired a deep respect for farmers whether they practice commodity farming or alternative farming, steeped in dogma or open to new ideas, and/or have succeeded or failed miserably, for they have an understanding of interconnection that few others could ever possess. Being tied to weather patterns, government policy, the will of speculators, and many other factors beyond their control, farmers realize their situation is generally outside of their control, something that few others can comprehend. Unlike many others, farmers seem not to despair over this fact that would make many wage earners unsightly twitch. Yet, here I am avidly pursuing a seemingly foreign entity with only glimmers of success and rarely grasping the sand, only to watch it fall between my fingers, forever lost somewhere on the beach of reality!

Learning To Embrace It

I'll be honest, when I left home a little over two weeks ago I didn't know what I thought about spending three weeks in Iowa learning about farming and agriculture. I grew up around livestock, so I have constantly heard about market prices, agricultural regulations, farm land, and challenges my parents face everyday dealing with their cattle businesses for as long as I can remember. Truthfully, I got tired of hearing all about cattle and the problems that came along with the business. By the time I hit 7th grade, I wished I lived in town and my parents had a normal nine to five job. I should have never complained considering cattle paid for me to attend private schools all my life and for my horse show life that entailed traveling over the United States.

As I started college, I had learned to accept that my parents were cattle brokers and I was thankful it paid for my college education, but I didn't want anything to do with it. Since I was officially a young adult, my parents thought I was old enough to learn how the cattle business worked. My mom helped me get a beginners farmers loan from the FSA, so I could buy my own cattle, hoping that if I had my own cattle I would have more interest in it. I did start to learn how things the work, but unfortunately it didn't increase my interest significantly.  I had in my mind that I wanted to be a lawyer, have a office, and live in town, perhaps on the water. In my head, there was no room for cattle in that equation.

Now as I sit in Iowa, after just finishing my sophomore year in college, I finally have realized farming isn't so bad. Since I have been on this trip I have learned to appreciate the occupation and I realized how lucky I was to grow up understanding it. I am ready to really learn how to work and manage my cattle instead of running from it.  Most people have no idea where their food comes from nor do they understand how conventional farming works. I never realized how much I had picked up from my parents or learned from them over the years. I also worked so hard to block out what they taught me about farming that I had failed to realize how much knowledge I had actually picked up. I am now proud to say I grew up with an agricultural back ground, and I hope that I can make it a part of my future. I don't want to be a full time cattle broke or farmer, but I would like to have some cows of my own that I keep on the farms that I will get to inherit from my parents. I also realize it may not be so bad to be a cell phone farmer and manage my farms by phone in my law office.

I'm not sure if it was seeing all the family farms here in Iowa and hearing their stories or learning about Dr. HN's story that really made me realize I shouldn't be running away from such a special occupation. I feel blessed to understand the business and have an opportunity to contribute something to it, even if it is not my full time job.

Diversity and Unity

The students and I have seen an amazing diversity of farms since arriving in Iowa on May 9th.  Iowans have invited us to their operations whether large and small.  Even among the farms that the owners would classify as small, however, there is significant diversity.  As one farmer put it succinctly, "Put three farmers in a room and you'll have three opinions about best practices, and none is better than the other.  It is what works for that farmer."  There are some themes, however, that unite these farms--whether small, large, organic, conventional, livestock, row crops, or vegetables--all of them are under pressure to be profitable.  I don't recall a single farmer who failed to discuss, in some fashion, the economics of the operation.  Profits go hand-in-hand with the decision to pursue a particular environmental practice or to pursue more time-consuming measures such as raising one's chickens in a free-range environment; it also means, however, that some compromises will be made, the decision, for example, of two operations to raise free-range eggs that were not organic.  The price of organic feed raised the price point of profitability above that which could be commanded in the marketplace.  All farmers face challenges with the marketing of their products whether matching the demand for pork raised under Niman Ranch standards or watching the extraordinary volatility in the grain markets, a point underscored during our visit with Iowa Secretary of Agriculture Bill Northey.

All farmers that we've met with have discussed strategies to survive the extraordinary challenges of working in a sector in which the producers are very often the price takers rather than the price makers.  Many farmers have noted that farming is a gamble, but none so poignantly as Randy Knapp of Epworth who quipped that "He didn't need to go to the casino because every day that he got up and walked to his dairy barn, it was a gamble." 

So why do it?  You can see it on the face of these folks--they absolutely love what they do, and they cannot imagine a life without their animals or land.  It may be a business, but at the end of the day, it is a way of life, one that all farm families see as ennobling.  Whatever their role in the food production system, they view their farms in transcendent terms.  And nearly all of those farms we have visited are thinking about ways to keep their children involved in farming, so that the family farm survives to another generation.

Things I've Learned About Iowa

"Iowa (Traveling III)" by Dar Williams has always been one of my favorite songs, from the first time I heard it. Though it's not all about traveling in Iowa, her haunting way of melodically moving through the chorus has been in the back of my mind pretty much ever since I got accepted into this trip.

I tried to keep my mind relatively clear of expectations before I embarked upon my three-week journey, and especially as much of our schedule was not confirmed until the last minute, it's seemed, this was relatively easy to do.

We still have a few days of learning left, but we are nearing the end of our journey. Wednesday, everything will be over, and I will head back very temporarily to West Virginia before moving on to the next phase of my life as a Teach for America corps member.

I'm not one to generalize, but I have made the following conclusions about the people and places we've seen over the last 2 1/2 weeks:

1. Iowa is flat, but not as flat as you may think. Depending on where you are in the state, you might see flat plains for miles or even gently rolling hills. It's sure not West Virginia, but it is pretty.
2. People tend to speak with a slight accent that I may only describe as "Iowan," pronouncing words like drought and roots as "drowth" and "rutz."
3. Iowans like to tell their stories.
4. Stop signs are optional. Gravel roads are common. It gets very dusty when it's dry.
5. Iowa is WINDY, especially in the afternoons and in certain regions.
6. Iowa is the #1 producer of corn, soybeans, pork, and eggs. They are in the top 10 in cattle production.

I've learned much more than the above, mostly about agriculture, food, and production. However, this list of 5 is what I will take away from Iowa as a traveler.