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Eldora, Iowa (population 2,820) marked Day Six on our Nine-City Iowa Tour, and a big day in the U.S. Senate, too, where 79 senators okayed a not-so-new, no-so-different, decidedly unexciting $286 billion dollar Farm Bill for 2008.

The Senate killed one measure that would have reined in the size of the subsidy payment a single farmer can receive from the government. (Instead, the cap remains at a hefty $360,000).

And it whacked another amendment that would have stemmed the flow of subsidy payments to big farmers taking home more than $750,000 in a given year. (Instead, industrial farmers — often city-dwellers — can still make up to $2.5 million before getting cut off.)

The day before, the revolutionary FRESH Act died, too, and the Senate thereby waived goodbye to a bi-partisan measure that would have done away with corn and other commodity subsidies altogether…and replaced them with a new system of crop insurance for all farmers — even the ones that grow fruits and veggies.

With these headlines fresh in farmers’ minds — and ours — we had a lively floor debate ourselves.

Read about the Farm Bill news here or here, and then watch our Eldora visit yourself by clicking the King Corn logo above to see Entry Five of our Iowa Tour Video Journal.

Back on the road and driving southeast from Greene, King Corn’s touring trio forged ahead on their nine-city adventure…stopping in two of Iowa’s largest cities this week.

Along Route 380 between Waterloo and Cedar Rapids, the corn fields were buried under several inches of fresh snow, and the corn wet milling plants of Cedar Rapids pumped hot steam into the below-freezing air — and high fructose corn syrup into our food system.

Even so, those intrepid Iowans turned out by the dozens. And with the Farm Bill up for debate again in the Senate, the conversations turned toward the political…

Watch for yourself by clicking the King Corn logo above to see Entry Four of our Iowa Tour Video Journal.