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A Fading Field of Gold

An Iowa native, Alyssa Andrews grew up on a diet of microwave corn dogs, Kraft Mac & Cheese, and other staples of the Midwestern middle-class. Her mouth watered at the thought of a pulled pork sandwich, and she dreamed about the next time she could get her hands on a six-piece McDonald’s chicken nugget. However, when she turned 17, Andrews began searching for the hidden consequences of these staples. While she found an ethical problem with eating meat, she also found ties between meat and Iowa’s most popular crop, corn.

When Andrews learned about modern meat production five years ago, she went vegan overnight and never looked back. In terms of reconstructing the Midwestern diet, Andrews is not alone. A 2019 Harris Poll conducted on behalf of the Vegetarian Resource Group revealed that 16% of Midwesterners sometimes or always eat vegan meals.

“Meat is supposed to cost a lot more,” Andrews said. “The government definitely subsidizes [feed]. It’s tough, and you don’t want to put farmers out of business. But in an ideal world, farmers would be able to switch over to more human food. Especially since big-time agricultural production is pretty bad for the eco-system.”

Miles and miles of golden stalks grace the open fields of America’s Corn State, which produces nearly 13 million acres of subsidized corn each year, according to Iowa Corn Growers Association. These fields of gold are viewed as the economic foundation of Iowa, providing jobs and ethanol for the state. However, Iowa vegans, researchers and farmers have begun uncovering this plant’s harmful effects on their environment.

According to the Global Change Data Lab, meat production has more than tripled in the past 50 years, and it has gotten cheaper. In a meta-analysis published in Science, researchers Joseph Poore and Thomas Nemecek found that livestock and fisheries accounted for 31% of food greenhouse gas emissions without considering land use. Poore and Nemecek also determined that land used for livestock contributed about 16% of additional food greenhouse gas emissions. According to NASA, these greenhouse gases trap in heat and warm the earth, causing adverse weather effects such as Iowa’s derecho.

Sylvia Secchi, Ph.D., University of Iowa associate professor of Geographical and Sustainability Studies, said the overproduction that has caused these greenhouse gas emissions is all thanks to corn. According to Secchi, about 50 percent of the corn Iowa produces becomes ethanol while the rest feeds the cows, pigs and other livestock.

“We’ve made those cows eat more corn, so we can produce more corn,” Secchi said. “It’s just with the policies we have right now the only thing we subsidize farmers for is corn and beans. Because the price of corn and beans is lower, it is cheaper to raise animals and the price we pay at the store is lower than it should be.”

Secchi said that corn subsidies caused Iowa to become economically dependent on the meat industry. Since corn feed is so cheap, both the consumer and the producer pay less for meat production. However, Secchi said the environment is paying the price for this cheap meat.

“The real cost to society of eating meat these days is not really what we pay at the store,” Secchi said. “The pollution costs, the air quality costs and water quality costs are not incorporated in the price of meat.”

While Secchi believes the corn and meat industries are harming the environment, an Iowa farmer’s son, Lane Brown, believes Iowans should look to other polluters.

“People think cows are [environmentally] dangerous,” Brown said. “Basically all they do is fart. If you look at it, cars and factories make cattle look like they’re nothing.”

Lane Brown grew up on his family farm which is located just outside Lenox, a small town in southwestern Iowa. Since he can remember, he has been feeding and raising calves. Brown’s family feeds their calves a corn-soybean byproduct, and they rely on Iowa’s corn production to feed their 200 calves. Once the calves are old enough, the Browns sell them to feedlots. Brown said he would prefer his family raise their calves and sell their meat directly to consumers like Secchi recommends, but it is not economically feasible.

“Ideally, the best way would be to raise the calves from start to finish,” Brown said. “But if you’re trying to fatten up a calf to get it to the weight where you can butcher it, it takes about a year and a half. And that first year and a half before you can make that full cycle, you’re going to have to pour an unbelievable amount of money [into it].”

While Brown’s family depends on the meat industry for income, he believes people should eat beef in moderation, along with other sources of protein.

“Personally, I don’t really care if someone eats [meat] or not,” Brown said. “People need to have a wide variety of a diet. I get that some people look at it and think ‘oh I can’t believe people can eat a calf or something.’”

Brown does not see the vegan or plant-based community in Iowa as a threat to his family’s financial wellbeing. However, he could see more people shifting toward plant-based diets.

“Right now they’re trying to grow burgers in factories and stuff, and I do feel like someday people are going to want to switch to that,” Brown said.

In agreement with Brown, Secchi does not advocate for dissolving the livestock industry.

“I think that vegan people have maybe a more extreme approach than most of us will be able to live with,” Secchi said. “But their heart is in the right place in that they are trying to reduce through their consumption our impact on the environment.”

Secchi is not a vegan or vegetarian herself, but she refuses to support farmers who participate in the feed lot system. She purchases her meat from local shops and Midwest farmers. She currently has half a pig in her freezer that she received from a small farmer in Minnesota. Grass-fed, locally-sourced meat consumption is not as harmful to the environment, Secchi said.

Thoma’s Meat Market in Iowa City is a local, independent shop that sources all its meat from Iowa with the exception of their chicken, which comes from Illinois. Manager Shawn Janes works full-time at the market and believes the shop offers the Iowa City area meat of higher quality.

“It kind of just gives you a closer connection to what you’re eating,” Janes said. “You’re not going into large feedlots where everything is filled with antibodies. It’s a higher quality of meat.”

Janes said the local market supports smaller farms that emit less greenhouse gas and hold themselves to higher ethical standards.

“It’s fueling the fields and farms around the area instead of stockpiling a bunch of cattle in one small area,” Janes said.

With environmentalists and vegans raising red flags about mass meat production, Iowa corn fields are no longer pure gold. However, farms from the 1920s may offer a brighter future for Iowa. In his 2006 book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, journalist Michael Pollan raised concerns about Iowa’s focus on corn, and wrote about the impacts the crop has on the mass meat production. He points to Iowa farms in the 1920s, when corn was considered the fourth most common crops. Farmers grew a variety of crops such as apples, oats, potatoes, cherries, wheat, plums, grapes, and pears, Pollan wrote. 

Like Pollan, Secchi also believes Iowa farms like Brown’s could find economic, environmental and ethical prosperity by shifting away from corn feed. From her research, Secchi believes resistance to more varied crops has to do with tradition. One of her recent studies looked at farmers’ opinions of conservation and sustainable agriculture.

“I think that farmers are very scared because I think that these kinds of changes could really revolutionize the [agriculture] system,” Secchi said. “The average age for farmers is 50. You’ve lived your life using a certain production model. You’re older. Do you really want major scuttlebutt having to change the way you’ve done things?”

She would like to see more farms grow crops for people, not just livestock. Iowa used to grow onions near Bettendorf and melons in Muscatine, Secchi said.

“We’re not just the place where we grow corn and beans,” Secchi said. “What has happened is a lot of those farmers grow feed corn because they can make a lot more money.”

 Iowa could grow a variety of legumes, lentils and other plant-based proteins if the state was not so focused on corn, she said.

 “I’m not saying don’t subsidize farming,” Secchi said. “I’m saying subsidize farming differently.”

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Big Industry in Iowa City: Continual decline in women in the UI Cinema major

With alumni working on large scale projects such as Game of Thrones and Avengers, the bright lights and big names tied to the University of Iowa’s Cinematic Arts program overshadowed the 18% drop in female enrollment in the department during the 2018-19 school year. 

The UI Office of the Registrar’s Profile of Students Enrolled reported 84 women and 112 men declared the Cinema major in fall 2018. Come spring 2019, the enrollment of women in the major dropped to 69 while the number of men rose to 125. Among the 13 women who dropped the major, junior and former Cinematic Arts major Olivia Williams grew tired of professors disregarding her opinions about misrepresentation in film. 

“There was just kind of a weird dynamic between men and women in that aspect,” Williams said. “It felt like there was no room for conversation about the dynamics between males and females in cinema. There was that male awkward silence if we wanted to talk about the male gaze which is heavily sexist and had a very toxic intent behind it.”  

During her year and a half in the cinema department, Williams said professors implied discussions about sexism in film were a waste of time. 

“[The girls in the class] wanted to create a discussion about the camera angles and how they apply to the objectification of women,” Williams said. “There’s this glass ceiling where you’re allowed to speak your opinions about things, but only so much until we feel like you’re making things uncomfortable.”  

While thankful for her time in the department, UI Cinematic Arts Alum and FilmScene Programming Director Rebecca Fons said she also felt frustrated with the lack of conversations in her cinema courses. During her time as a student in the early 2000s, Fons said she was one of two girls in the Cinema major. 

“We were sort of like exotic birds because we were the only two girls,” Fons said. “There were very few conversations about the women in film. We really didn’t talk about the femininity or the lack of female characters or the objectification of female characters. There is much more dialogue that kind of thing now.”  

Fons said the lack of minority representation in her film classes allowed her to seek out these voices on her own time. Following the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements, Fons said she noticed more of an effort to represent and showcase female voices in the industry. More filmmakers hire female or non-binary producers or editors to ensure fair representation in the industry, she said.  

To increase representation in the local arena, Fons began a FilmScene program called Women’s March which exclusively featured women and non-binary filmmakers during March in 2018 and 2019. However, this past spring Fons decided FilmScene should celebrate underrepresented filmmakers all year round and began a new series called Reel Representation.  

“Once a quarter, there will be some sort of presentation: a special guest or a five-part film series or maybe a panel that focuses on women and gender non-binary artists,” Fons said. “You can’t just say ‘Oh it’s Earth Day, so I’m going to recycle today and that’s it and the other 364 days of the year I’m not going to do it.’ It’s important to practice what you preach, and it’s important to put that effort into what you do all year round.”  

Both Williams and Fons said they felt a lack of conversation about social equality in their cinema courses. Assistant professor of Cinematic Arts and internationally recognized independent filmmaker Anahita Ghazvinizadeh said she does not initiate political conversations in her classes to keep her students focused on developing their craft. Ghazvinizadeh also strives to prevent pushing her world views on her students.  

“Unless you know how to make an effective film, all these views and beliefs will not be memorable and impactful in your work,” Ghazvinizadeh said. “I have really limited time to help my students get better at the craft. I think the way we communicate our world views through our stories.” 

Due to the controversies behind several successful contemporary filmmakers, discussions about sexism, racism and feminism still find their way into Ghazvinizadeh’s class, she said. However, Ghazvinizadeh encourages her students to focus on the work rather than the filmmaker, she said.   

Originally from Iran, Ghazvinizadeh finds herself grateful for the career opportunities and safety she has received in America, she said. Iranian culture and heritage labels women as inferior to men, and public spaces are often not safe places for women, she said.  

“Gratefulness is something I talk to my students about,” Ghazvinizadeh. “It’s good to be critical, but we shouldn’t become complainers and nag. Like people under the harshest circumstances can survive and find the things they are grateful for.” 

In the audio clip above, Cinematic Arts assistant professor Anahita Ghazvinizadeh discusses her experiences in Iran and how it’s impacted her teaching style and cinematic work.

Junior Cinematic Arts major Molly Bagnall said she believes fellow students with differing opinions and closed-minds are the main issue in the department. Students tend to disregard older films, thinking the issues do not apply to today’s culture, she said. While watching a screening of Bagnall’s favorite film “Vertigo,” directed by Alfred Hitchcock, her fellow students deemed the gender dynamics in the film as an outdated issue.   

“It sucks more when you’re in a classroom and you’re not sure how to respond,” Bagnall said. “A lot of time someone will say something that I find really upsetting, but it’s in an academic environment.”  

Bagnall serves as the Executive Director of Bijou Film Board, a student organization co-sponsored by the University of Iowa and FilmScene. Bijou works to expose students to films from a variety of genres, eras, filmmakers and more. The limited exposure students receive to diverse films is harming their film education and their understanding of the world around them, Bagnall said.  

“I want them to walk into a class screening about a weird documentary or an experimental film about feminism or about the gay-rights movement or about the black power movement and watch it and let the film say something to them,” Bagnall said.   

While Ghazvinizadeh believes it is important to focus on the film rather than its creators, Bagnall said she prefers to dive into the true intentions behind the films that are made by large corporations like Disney.  

“You can’t say that you’re getting a full film education if the only films played at theatres are directed by white people,” Bagnall said. “Right now, there’s a lot of conventional films coming out like Black Panther. I don’t think that is the perfect or necessarily the best example of representation on screen because it’s still feeding into a corporation, a multi-million dollar corporation. That’s great, but what are Marvel and Disney doing that challenges any other black filmmaker to actually get work out?”  

 

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Video: Inclusion still scarce on campus, UIowa students report

 Nine months after University of Iowa students began the #DoesUIowaLoveMe campaign, students continue to report little to no improvement in inclusion on campus.

The social media campaign “#DoesUIowaLoveMe” encouraged students of color and members of the LGBTQ+ community to share the discrimination they experienced on campus on Instagram and Twitter.

The Division of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion developed a 2019-2021 Action Plan. This action plan focused on spreading awareness of cultural events, as well as expanding the number of marginalized students on campus, like the Women’s Climbing Clinic. However, sophomore Anna Leahy reports not knowing about the LGBTQ+ safe spaces on campus and VP of the African Student Association Ayotoluwafunmi Ogunwusi says the discrimination has gotten worse.

https://youtu.be/sLTLiF9cSp4

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Local OB-GYN holds small fundraiser for low-income patients

The Emma Goldman Clinic invited the Iowa City community to dress up in their spookiest attire and play some bar trivia at The Mill Restaurant on Sunday night, Oct. 27. Around 7:30, the pirates and Harry Potter characters strolled into the Iowa City restaurant and “Trick or Trivia” began.  

Attendees answered questions about women’s history, reproductive organs and the Emma Goldman Clinic while enjoying some appetizers and good company. Admission was $5 a person with all proceeds going towards the clinic. 

Emma employee Maggie Dressel has volunteered and worked at the clinic since she graduated from the University of Iowa in 2017. She has seen the impact of the clinic’s access fund, she said. 

“Reproductive rights are under attack right now across the country,” Dressel said. “We’re seeing a lot of people from neighboring states like Illinois, Wisconsin and Missouri come to Emma. It’s really important that we have the subsidy to support them. Definitely over half maybe three-fourths of our patients use the subsidy.” 

Clinic board member Kathryn Edel says that while Planned Parenthood is a great organization, she believes the independent clinics need to receive more media coverage. Events like Trick or Trivia educates community members about Emma and its services, Edel said. 

“Clinic hosts a couple annual fundraiser and these small fundraiser events are really to engage community members,” Edel said. “It’s a great way to promote education about reproductive healthcare in general. A lot of people are still unfamiliar about the clinic and what care we provide. It’s a great way to familiarize folks with the services we provide.” 

About ten people attended the event, resulting in a total of $75 raised for the access fund, Dressel said. 

“Healthcare is a right and it’s important to have access to health care, but costs shouldn’t as big as a factor,” Dressel said. 

The Emma Goldman clinic provides abortion services as well as contraception, education, advocacy and other gynecology services to Iowa City, Iowa and surrounding states. By providing subsidized fees and discounts, Emma strives to eliminate any and all barriers between their patients and quality, client-centered health care. 

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UI faculty and students face vape epidemic on campus

Three exams a week, twenty hours of work and social pressure weighs on college students across the nation, leading them to seek coping methods. Recently, young adults find comfort in a thin piece of metal that fits right in their hand and the high levels of nicotine these tiny devices puff out. The rise of e-cigarette usage on campus and the 29 alleged vape-related deaths nationwide raises the concerns of UI faculty and students alike. 

According to the National College Health Assessment, 26.8% of University of Iowa students reported using e-cigarettes often, which is twice the national average of 12.6%. The trend gained popularity so quickly that health officials have yet to determine the full health impacts of vaping. UI Student Health Senior Health Consultant Steph Beecher says the only confirmed health defect of e-cigarettes is their ability to impair lung compacity.  

Beecher says that while most trends gradually climb, the e-cigarette trend, especially amongst UI students, is a sharp incline Student Health was not prepared for. 

“Nationwide, we have to keep pushing to get the research out,” Beecher said. “I went to a conference a year and a half ago at Mayo Clinic, and they are like the gurus of tobacco cessation. There’s probably 50 of us, educators and doctors. Immediately, we’re like, ‘What’s this Juul thing?’ Mayo was like ‘We don’t know.’” 

The FDA has not found an effective way to treat vape addiction, Beecher said. The lack of information affects Student Health’s ability to treat students as well, especially since most students do not acknowledge their addiction, she said. 

To learn more about the initiatives Student Health is taking to battle vaping on campus, listen to a clip from an interview with Beecher.

Instead of quitting completely, Beecher suggests fighting against the brain’s need for nicotine by slowly working up to resisting the urge more and more each day. Beecher recommends taking Chantix, chewing nicotine gum and counseling for students who struggle with nicotine vape addiction. 

“The methods that I’m mentioning none of them have been found to work with vaping,” Beecher said. “The research isn’t out there. So I tell students we’re still figuring this out.”

Sophomore Megan Weinberger also suffers from an addiction to vape pens, and she began taking her recovery more seriously following the report of the vape-related deaths. Weinberger first became addicted after using a friend’s vape. Unaware of the nicotine in the vapor, Weinberger became unknowingly addicted to nicotine and continued using Juuls throughout her freshman year of college. 

Now, Weinberger continues to vape juice without nicotine to help ease herself off her addiction. She says it is not as satisfying as juice with nicotine, but the recent deaths settle her need for nicotine vapes, she said. 

“People know it’s wrong, but it hasn’t reached the level of cigarettes yet where it’s like this is a problem,” Weinberger said. “As a culture, we’re like ‘it’s cool.’ People [my] age don’t realize it’s a problem.” 

Peer pressure and social pressure also play a large role in the temptation of vape pens, Beecher said.  

First-year Grace Wachholz owns a Juul, but only vapes in social settings like parties or tailgates. 

“I’ll go to a party, and if I vape, it’s not the end of the world,” Wachholz said. “I don’t think it’s necessarily good. As long as I don’t do it by myself, that’s when it’s dangerous.” 

Beecher visited Up In Smoke’s Iowa City location to examine some of the marketing and set up behind the store. She understands why students find the store visually appealing, she said. Based on the bright colors and fruity flavors, Beecher says she highly doubts vape companies are targeting older, long-term smokers. The companies use their money, drugs and “cool” factor to manipulate teenagers, Beecher said. 

First-year Olivia Allen said she thinks the media and marketing increased vape usage.  

“I feel like I didn’t even know what a Juul was or what an NJOY was until I had seen all the ads for them,” Allen said.  

Allen does not own a vape, but she vapes in party settings using her friend’s Juul.  

However, Beecher believes Juul is trying to cover up the main issue of their product and remove the blame from their organization by advocating for an increase in vaping age. 

“Juul put together a proposal to raise the age to 21 to buy their project,” Beecher said. “In face value, that’s great, but we need to be looking at other regulations like what the hell is in your product. It’s a Trojan horse.” 

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Ziegenhorn: UIowa medical student already saves lives

A 30-year-old medical student, Sarah Ziegenhorn appears to be just another one of the 200 volunteers Iowa Harm Reduction Coalition enlists to drive the outreach vehicle full of naloxone, cookers, sterile waters and condoms.  

However, Ziegenhorn has been aiding stigmatized groups for decades, and in 2016, while attending medical school, she co-founded the largest harm reduction in Iowa.  

The Iowa Harm Reduction Coalition (IHRC) is a non-profit organization based in Cedar Rapids that offers safety services and supplies to sex workers and people who use drugs. Their services are available to the areas of Cedar Rapids, Iowa City, Dubuque, Des Moines and the surrounding rural areas. Mobile outreach and delivery of supplies, HIV/HCV rapid testing, hotlines, and treatment programs are among the variety of services the IHRC provides to its participants.  

Ziegenhorn’s coalition provides a legal but quietly operated needle exchange program, which offers free, clean needles as well as sterile water, cookers and more supplies to people who inject drugs to prevent the transmission of diseases.  

The IHRC also provides naloxone or narcan kits, which are used to reverse overdoses. IHRC gives out 100,000 needles a month, serves 5,000 to 10,000 IV drug users annually and has given out 30,000 narcan overdose kits since its founding, Ziegenhorn said. By 2017, IHRC reported that Iowa’s Hepatitis C transmission and opioid overdose rates were dropping fast. 

Ziegenhorn’s history of harm prevention began with her family. She spent the majority of her early childhood in Muscatine, working and exploring her family’s farm. She attended the Iowa City Community School District for the entirety of her precollegiate education. However, growing up with a younger brother with severe autism and a father who had chronic depression, a lot of her childhood holidays were spent in inpatient care of the University of Iowa Hospitals. At age 15, Ziegenhorn’s lost her father to suicide. 

“Between losing (my father) in such a traumatic way and then having a brother with autism, my family had to spend a lot of time seeking out mental health care and being engaged with the healthcare system while experiencing some pretty stigmatized conditions especially in rural Iowa,” Ziegenhorn said. 

Ziegenhorn said that a lot of close family friends had no idea her father was hospitalized for suicidal intentions for most of his adult life, and his condition was so stigmatized in rural areas that many families kept mental illnesses a secret. His struggle with stigma lead Ziegenhorn to question how that treatment could be avoided.  

After graduating from McAllister College with degrees in Geography and Community Health, Ziegenhorn moved to Washington D.C., a decision she describes as random and rash. She got a job with the Institute of Medicine, now known as the National Academy of Medicine, a nongovernmental organization that provided scientific information to the federal government.  

After a full day of work, one or two nights a week, Ziegenhorn would drive an outreach van around the streets of DC from 10 p.m. until 7 a.m. the next morning, providing supplies such as clean needles, cookers, condoms, disinfectants and other materials needed for street-based sex work and drug use.  

The more nights she spent providing basic healthcare necessities to people on the street, the more Ziegenhorn noticed the similar stigma formed around mental illness, like her father’s, and drug use. She concluded that both groups of people, those with mental illness and those who use drugs, face stigma that block them from accessing healthcare from normative institutions.  

After five years in D.C., Ziegenhorn returned to Iowa, started medical school and began looking for harm reduction volunteering opportunities. Her search came up blank except for an Iowa law which declared needle exchange illegal. She began her coalition with help from Dan Bigg, the head of the Chicago Recovery Alliance. Bigg supplied Ziegenhorn with the naloxone and syringes when IHRC first started serving the Cedar Rapids area in 2016. Bigg passed away from an overdose a year ago, but Ziegenhorn remembers him as a man who only cared about the wellbeing of others. 

“He had meetings with FDA where he’d show up wearing exercise shorts and a giant oversized T-shirt with barbeque stains on it. He would put up a PowerPoint that had the FDA acronym and it would say ‘FDA stands for Fuck over Drug users Always,’” Ziegenhorn said.  

Ziegenhorn explains IHRC was created and is run by drug users, for drug users. Ziegenhorn’s seven staff members strives to create a safe, stigma-free environment for all their participants. Ziegenhorn built the IHRC with help from her partner Andrew “Andy” Beeler, who would later become Sarah’s fiancé. For 15 years, Beeler had worked in harm reduction, saving dozens of lives by reversing overdose and advocating for felon voting rights. Beeler also lead IHRC’s Hepatitis C program, counseled 25 participants and provided harm reduction training to methadone clinics. Beeler passed away from an overdose this past March.  

“It’s pretty difficult. There’s been a lot of loss in the past year or two, losing a lot of people who were participants in our program, losing really close friends or family members,” Ziegenhorn said. “I don’t know if I have a good response to how I deal with stress other than try and take things day by day. Keep moving forward.” 

To move forward, Ziegenhorn continues to focus on changing the legislation. Ziegenhorn has been fighting for legal needle exchange programs since she opened IHRC, however, the needle exchange bill she proposes has yet to make it to the governor’s desk. Ziegenhorn reports that noncontroversial bills take three to ten years to pass, and while 90-95% of legislators in each of the chambers supports the bill, the legislators are hesitant to pass the bill without the full support from every member. 

Every year, IHRC hosts several events that work to inform the community and reform legislation. Among these are IHRC’s Day on the Hill where volunteers and advocates gather to speak with state representatives and push for change in legislation involving the opioid crisis, HIV and Hepatitis C.  

This upcoming Oct. 4 and 5, IHRC is hosting their fourth annual summit. Five presidential candidates are booked to make an appearance and discuss the overdose crisis in America. Ziegenhorn hopes that this new batch of lawmakers will help push for legislation that would protect people like Beeler, her father and so many other Americans who are affected by stigma.