I am in that phase of a project where everything IS the project. Here is a brief stream of consciousness writing about what it’s like to work on the Iowa Prairie Documentary Project…for about 10 minutes.

I keep seeing the yellow summer airplane and a wet cloud of fungicide soaking a woman and her son. The pilot hit the button before he was over the correct corn field. No apologies. But someone did say “that stuff is harmless”. Then come the 18 wheelers later on in the season. The work crew is there. Before it can be believed by old timers they load the corn that’s planted corner to corner and off they go. The “farmer” hires everyone while he enjoys life in California. He doesn’t even know the slope of his land in Iowa. He hasn’t walked it in years or maybe ever. He’s a clean shoed landlord with renters. He doesn’t know a “side by side” from a golf cart. He doesn’t care that the valley creek got straight as a shotgun in 1880. He doesn’t care that it’s loaded with his paid for carcinogenic nitrates and tons of other chemicals and that it’s pointed downstream.

He doesn’t think about the water that runs through drainage tiles like it’s in a hurry to push the cancer rates even higher. He just wants tall corn.

After a windy day in Iowa City, a scientist tested dust off of a leaf and found signs of Atrazine. Look it up. It’s in the air you are breathing, miles and miles away from the nearest field.

The corn and soybean seeds that go into the Iowa soil are not so much seeds as they are an amalgamation. Multiple layers, one after the other, manmade chemicals douse and soak every single seed. These chemicals, individually are known to be harmful to life. Who has done the testing for what happens when they are all combined and ingested? Nobody.

The guy that wants to put CO2 pipelines all over the state, is already producing the same product in another country. It would mean that he is trying to convince everyone in Iowa that there is really hot market for what he is peddling…while he is creating the competition for the same market. It’s like an arms race and he can sell to both sides. He wins either way. Iowans will lose either way.

Soon, I am going to interview someone in Iowa who has over 15 members of his family with cancer. If I read another report that claims our high cancer rates are due to eating bacon or drinking beer or “lifestyle choices”….instead of what humans are clearly doing to the air and water – I am going to lose my damn mind.

I think about Oak trees all day long. About their branches and what the droop means. About the placement and the soil they grown in. On my daily walks I now have Oak trees that I say hello to.

I think about land and ownership and indigenous people and journal entries from 1835 drift in and out like sun behind clouds. I think about starting the movie with the very first fur traders to come here and how that’s when it all started to change, that’s the point of origin for water we can’t trust and cancer and an entire state with wilderness areas small enough to walk through in less than an hour.

I am reading journal entries that predate the Beaver Wars. Jesuits were a special kind of stupid. Let me show you a Bible while I am plotting your destruction?

I think about people who are trying to do the right thing by the land and I think you can recognize that it is the right thing, when they ask for no reward in return for its doing. That’s the rarest thing of all. And the opposite of that, is how we got into this whole damn mess to begin with.

Human beings taking and wanting more than they need, quite simply, is the reason Iowa is the USA’s most environmentally degraded state. How do I say all this in a ninety minute movie?

Data Centers. That has to be talked about.
The poisoned Plum Creek watershed, just southwest of the Cedar Rapids airport…Biosolids mixed with arsenic and mercury have been applied to the land repeatedly, who is stopping them? Beef from that land is raised and sold to Hyvee. I doubt anyone is doing testing on that meat. 

Every time I work on a project I run into an absolute truth: I realize I can’t tell the full truth. There are things that can’t be mentioned. There are people that know some pretty serious things and they tell them to me but they won’t on the record. Because if they do, they will lose their access to knowing what is really going on, which is worse than not knowing.

I think about the way Big Ag companies support research related to prairie restoration, to prairie plants research. They funnel greenwashing PR money at big nonprofits that you would recognize the names of. If you ever wonder why these conservation orgs don’t come out with hard hitting pieces about what’s going on behind the curtains of Bayer Crop Science and other large companies—well there’s no need to wonder. But I think this green muzzle is worth knowing about.

I think about sitting in a car parked outside of a pig CAFO last week and even with the engine running and wind blowing, I could hear what could only be described as screaming. There’s a difference between a pig oinking or squealing…and a half insane creature screaming from a life of drugged misery. And now I have heard that difference.

The company that is guilty of the largest chemical spill in Iowa’s history now has a lawsuit being levied against them. This is a good thing. How can I center this effort in the film?

Every thing happening with prairie restoration, restorative agriculture, the reversal (however small and mighty it may yet be) of the corn and soybean industry has been based on long learned efforts of so many Iowans that started this work decades ago. I have been so fortunate to have spent time with many of them already.

Wisdom, only seems to show up in well aged packages. Time makes a difference.

The Iowa Prairie Documentary Project