Last Wednesday, Iowa Public Television aired the motion picture Food, Inc. throughout the state. (If you missed the broadcast, the film is available on line streaming until April 29th as a part of the event). Because of the key role agriculture plays in the state, PBS decided to air a special edition of the Iowa Journal with Market to Market host Mark Pearson moderating a discussion with Craig Lang, President of the Iowa Farm Bureau Federation, and Neil Hamilton from the Agricultural Law Center at Drake University. (The Iowa Journal episode is also available on-line streaming). The whole event was pretty sedate and Iowa-like in its ability to rationally discuss the issue of the industrialization of food. The effect of this was like taking a sleep pill, both the film and the ensuing discussion. Click on the links above and see what your reaction would be.

It is not that the subject is uninteresting. To the contrary, food production is a matter of continuous debate in Iowa. Whether at the corner gas station, the feed mill or the coffee shop, wherever Iowans congregate, they demonstrate they are educated on and talk about food production. There is consensus that Monsanto does not have enough competition. People differ on how to raise livestock. Organic growers are envied for the higher price their produce commands. Land use, herbicides, pesticides and genetically modified organisms are evaluated and discussed. A row crop farmer listens with interest when an organic farmer is speaking, and vice versa. Some farmers have given up on growing certified organic crops because the costs are prohibitive, although they continue to use organic practices. Agriculture in Iowa is a diverse mix once a person gets beyond the discussion of row crops and concentrated animal feeding operations.

Michael Pollan, one of the narrators of Food, Inc., has been a frequent visitor to Iowa and is better known for his written work on food, The Omnivore’s Dilemma and In Defense of Food. He also played a significant role in the production of the film King Corn which told the story of growing corn in Iowa, following its path through the food chain. Pollan’s work is familiar to many Iowans and he points to the Farm Bill as a major influence on the industrialization of food. If you think about it, if the U.S. Government props up corn, soybeans wheat and cotton with subsidies, why wouldn’t farmers go large scale in row crops of these commodities? While individual farmers tend to be good stewards of the land, economic pressures drive them towards efficiencies that create the large scale depicted in Food, Inc. It may be a case of too much government. It may also be a case of too much influence in government.

If we look at one example from Food, Inc. it tells this story of influence. Clarence Thomas is an associate justice of the United States Supreme Court and a former Monsanto attorney. Thomas wrote the majority opinion in the case that enabled Monsanto to patent the genetic makeup of food plants as proprietary intellectual property. With that Supreme Court decision, Monsanto has come to dominate the seed market, has virtually put companies that clean a farmer’s saved seeds out of business and reduced the amount of crop diversity. Each of these things causes trouble, as the film indicated.

So what is an Iowan to do? For me, it means expanding our garden this year. I took soil samples and had them analyzed by the Iowa State University lab. When there was a nitrogen deficiency, I took the time to figure out the least intrusive way to add it, using corn gluten meal which contains 10% nitrogen. As a friend pointed out, there are problems with the row crop agriculture from which corn gluten meal comes, but I am not a purist.

I bought seeds where they were found at grocery stores, some certified organic and some not. Some company likely owns the patents on all of them and if they re-seed themselves I hope no one rats me out. While friends use Seed Savers in Decorah, that seems too “special.”

My next door neighbor owns the town grocery store and I bought tomato, broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower and brussels sprouts seedlings there so that when he mows the lawn next to my garden, he can see our support for the town economy. The rest of the seedlings will be purchased at the local farmers’ market and grown them to maturity without added fertilizer except our own compost. A friend did agree to provide us with some horse manure. I may take him up on it as a compost starter.

The thing is, people who work, or families where all of the adults work, feel they don’t have time for all of this. This is where the industrialized food system finds its customers. When money is scarce and there are bills to be paid, and a host of financial exigencies, they neither have the money. Iowans get what Food, Inc. is saying. They understand the Farm Bureau’s perspective.

The reason it is difficult to feel moral outrage over the industrialization of food production is that the middle class has been beaten down already. Industrialized food is just one more sign of the oppressor. While the producers at Iowa Public Television thought there was something there, for many of us, it was just one more day in the post-Reagan society.