MORE IOWA TIPS. Ann‘s the real Iowa expert around the TAP offices, but my three weeks in the state recently also taught me a few critical distinctions:

  • Field corn is the stuff you see growing all over the state. It is used to make animal feed, corn syrup, various starches, and ethanol. The stuff you eat is called sweet corn. On the East Coast, sweet corn is a particular variety of edible corn — usually an early-ripening one — but in Iowa all edible corn is known as sweet corn. Do not let that confuse you! There are many, many, many types of corn:

    Corn

    (Varieties of prize winning corn at the Iowa State Fair, 2007.)

  • Corn is what they grown on farms but local vegetables are grown in gardens. If you are growing string-beans for a farmers’ market, you’re just gardening. But if you’re growing soy beans for Archer Daniels Midland Company, well then — you are farming.

    Also, because I don’t see the point in a significant percentage of the national political press corps, with the exception of the more experienced hands, being disoriented and since there’s no Time Out Des Moines or Let’s Go, Iowa, I’ve compiled a little guide for East and West Coast elites visiting the Hawkeye State for work. Feel free to write me at garanceruta at gmail dot com if you’d like to add recommendations or make any suggestions to the (work-in-progress) “Iowa for Journalists.”

    –Garance Franke-Ruta

    • Garance Franke-Ruta is a former senior editor at the Prospect. Her work has also appeared in The Washington Post, The Washington Monthly, The New Republic, and The Wall Street Journal, among other publications. She was a 2006 recipient of a fellowship at the Joan Shorenstein Center on Press, Politics, and Public Policy at Harvard University.