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I came home to the Netherlands last week. That is, physically, I feel in between places mentally, somewhere in the ocean of experiences. My time in the US has been an intense experience. Confucius said: tell me and I forget, show me and I remember, involve me and I understand. Thanks to the great hospitality of [...]

Corn, soybean and hogs; the way we do things here

Iowa agriculture is dominated by corn, soybean, hog and ethanol production. A common feature among this list is that all of these are commodities; bulk products ready for further industrial processing. In a way, Iowa agriculture represents a single ‘farming style’ (Van der Ploeg et al), a choice for: - a high level of specialization - high input/high [...]

Yet another crisis in the hog industry

During my time in Ames I met quite a few current or previous students of the Graduate Program in Sustainable Agriculture (GPSA) in which both Jan and Cornelia Flora teach. The GPSA is a truly interdisciplinary program in which students with diverse (and often international) backgrounds meet. Although each student has a ‘home department’ such [...]

Proper Dutch spatial planning in Pella, IA

There is a real Dutch looking town in Iowa, people kept telling me about. “Go and see it, it will be fun”. So I did, and, it was. When turning off the highway 163, I immediately saw what everybody meant. Even in the shopping mall strip outside the downtown area all buildings had some kind [...]

To eliminate our networking desert

How to share experiences with people working in establishing local food systems in other places? What is going on where? In Iowa, the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture, serves as a linking pin around building local food systems. Today I joined a meeting of the Regional Food Systems Working Group. This group is a Community [...]

Allium Sativum L.

I drove to Minburn yesterday where I spent a great day at the Small Potatoes Farm. I past the road to the farm without noticing and stopped at the post office, next to the grain elevator, to ask for directions. A good choice because the post office, I soon realized is the epic center of this tiny town. [...]

Buying fresh local organic sustainable and just food….

Corn! The first harvest of sweet corn at the farmers market in Des Moines While I am staying in Ames, I am enjoying the fresh fruits and vegetables of the Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm in which the Flora’s have a share. All throughout the growing season, the weekly share can be picked up at [...]

Knee-high by the 4th of July

Independence Day, the 4th of July is of course an important day in the US. And it therefore serves as a marker in time, if the corn is knee-high by the fourth of July, you can be happy. Well, here in Ames, one can be satisfied. The corn is more like shoulder-high already. Maybe this [...]

Food democracy

Nothing but corn in Iowa. So I did some serious weeding and hoeing of corn this weekend……..Of white corn. Not the regular uneatable corn which goes into feed fodder, energy production or corn sweetener. These immense fields are round-up ready anyway. The corn grown in the community garden in Marshall town (see blog) can be [...]

Sioux City and Community Development

Monday, I embarked on a 15 day travel with Cornelia and Jan Flora, stopping by various meetings, projects and conferences in a south west direction from Ames, Iowa to Arizona and back. The amount of car miles involved would get me twice around the Netherlands I suppose. We started with a meeting in Sioux City, [...]