ABSTRACT
In March 2001 I travelled to Ames, Iowa to talk about the views held by environmental and animal welfare activists as part of a then-annual agricultural forum convened by the Center for Agricultural and Rural Development (CARD) at Iowa State University, one of the nation’s great land-grant universities. Upon being invited to participate, I did what any good guest should do: I checked out my hosts. After all, I live in an East Coast city, teach at a large urban university, and have no experience whatsoever with “real” farming, so I wanted to understand what I was getting myself into. Equally important, I wanted to avoid embarrassing myself before the several hundred in attendance, including agricultural researchers, food industry officials, students, and, yes, a lot of Iowa farmers with time on their hands before spring planting. So I checked out the ISU College of Agriculture website to get a sense as to what it does.
