Agri-tool

I first saw it when we were miles away.

It would have been hard not to notice the fat cylindrical towers sticking out of the Iowa countryside, or the long white tail of smoke or steam that waved with the wind. I’d never seen it before; it was a new and unfamiliar landmark on the way to grandma’s house, so I asked my dad what it was.

“It’s a new ethanol plant.”

Goddamn, I thought. That looks fucking horrible.

“You want to drive past it?” he asked.

I wanted to get a close look at this behemoth — a miracle plant, turning corn into fuel, in the middle of the world’s breadbasket — so instead of turning right on the new Highway 20 dad drove across to a little gravel road to the old Highway 20 and turned east toward the plant and Dyersville.

The ethanol plant had been built in the middle of what had once been just a field. It was still flanked by corn, but a huge chunk of the land was dedicated to the large towers, the massive piping, and the multiple railroad lines fanning out like at a train station.

That’s ethanol?

The reality and site of its creation had never been part of ethanol's image for me. My opinion of it has changed in the past few years, but I had always thought of the end product, the cheap shit at the BP station, which had once been field corn. Sure, I wondered how and where it was processed, but I never thought of a hideous, smoke spewing industrial monster smack dab in pastoral Iowa. How could something so potentially good look so bad?

There’s still heated debate regarding ethanol. It’s an alternative to oil, but it’s the end product of potentially damaging agricultural practices and profitable to an increasingly select number of large agribusinesses — a new wave of oil barons, if you will. But Iowa seems to be sold on the idea. The fob for my car’s spare key is one I got at the Iowa State Fair sometime in the late-‘90s; it reads, “Cleaner Air for Iowa with Ethanol.” One of the people who helped sell the concept, and is endlessly touting its benefits, was selected today by President-elect Barack Obama to be the government’s new agriculture secretary: Tom Vilsack, the former Governor of Iowa.

Vilsack, who served two terms as Gov, was, I suppose, a logical choice for the position. But was he the right choice? When I first saw the headline tonight I thought, “Cool — an Iowa guy,” but then remembered Vilsack is a lawyer…who isn’t even from Iowa. He’s from Pittsburg and went to college in New York. The only reason he was in Iowa is because his wife is from Mount Pleasant. I believe his only agricultural experience has come through politics, which means he’s a politician making decisions and recommendations regarding something he has little hands-on knowledge of.

Here’s the thing I don’t get: why appoint people to oversee and administer something they don’t have direct experience with? Vilsack definitely has experience with agri-politics, but does he have experience with agri-practice? I would much prefer someone who knows the land, who knows what is best for the farmers of America, and who has been or is an American farmer. The men and women who have experience rising early to feed the livestock every morning, worrying when it rains too much or too little, and walking rows with the summer sun beating down are best qualified for the job, not someone who spends his day wearing $1000 suits in an air conditioned building and making outrageous money.