The Corn Economy

Michael Pollak mpollak at panix.com
Sun Jul 21 22:57:21 PDT 2002


[Corn costs $3 a bushel to grow and sells for $2, so we feed it to fish because it's so cheap? This sounds like the kind of story people used to use to skewer Gosplan. Good thing we don't live in a planned economy.]

New York Times July 19, 2002

When a Crop Becomes King

By MICHAEL POLLAN

<snip>

One need look no further than the $190 billion farm bill President

Bush signed last month to wonder whose interests are really being

served here. Under the 10-year program, taxpayers will pay farmers $4

billion a year to grow ever more corn, this despite the fact that we

struggle to get rid of the surplus the plant already produces. The

average bushel of corn (56 pounds) sells for about $2 today; it costs

farmers more than $3 to grow it. But rather than design a program that

would encourage farmers to plant less corn which would have the

benefit of lifting the price farmers receive for it Congress has

decided instead to subsidize corn by the bushel, thereby insuring that

zea mays dominion over its 125,000-square mile American habitat will

go unchallenged.

At first blush this subsidy might look like a handout for farmers, but

really it's a form of welfare for the plant itself and for all those

economic interests that profit from its overproduction: the

processors, factory farms, and the soft drink and snack makers that

rely on cheap corn. For zea mays [the botanical name for corn] has

triumphed by making itself indispensable not to farmers (whom it is

swiftly and surely bankrupting) but to the Archer Daniels Midlands,

Tysons and Coca-Colas of the world.

Our entire food supply has undergone a process of "cornification" in

recent years, without our even noticing it. That's because, unlike in

Mexico, where a corn-based diet has been the norm for centuries, in

the United States most of the corn we consume is invisible, having

been heavily processed or passed through food animals before it

reaches us. Most of the animals we eat (chickens, pigs and cows) today

subsist on a diet of corn, regardless of whether it is good for them.

In the case of beef cattle, which evolved to eat grass, a corn diet

wreaks havoc on their digestive system, making it necessary to feed

them antibiotics to stave off illness and infection. Even farm-raised

salmon are being bred to tolerate corn not a food their evolution has

prepared them for. Why feed fish corn? Because it's the cheapest thing

you can feed any animal, thanks to federal subsidies. But even with

more than half of the 10 billion bushels of corn produced annually

being fed to animals, there is plenty left over. So companies like

A.D.M., Cargill and ConAgra have figured ingenious new ways to dispose

of it, turning it into everything from ethanol to Vitamin C and

biodegradable plastics.

By far the best strategy for keeping zea mays in business has been the

development of high-fructose corn syrup, which has all but pushed

sugar aside. Since the 1980's, most soft drink manufacturers have

switched from sugar to corn sweeteners, as have most snack makers.

Nearly 10 percent of the calories Americans consume now come from corn

sweeteners; the figure is 20 percent for many children. Add to that

all the corn-based animal protein (corn-fed beef, chicken and pork)

and the corn qua corn (chips, muffins, sweet corn) and you have a

plant that has become one of nature's greatest success stories, by

turning us (along with several other equally unwitting species) into

an expanding race of corn eaters.

<snip>

We know a lot more about what 80 million acres of corn is doing to the

health of our environment: serious and lasting damage. Modern corn

hybrids are the greediest of plants, demanding more nitrogen

fertilizer than any other crop. Corn requires more pesticide than any

other food crop. Runoff from these chemicals finds its way into the

groundwater and, in the Midwestern corn belt, into the Mississippi

River, which carries it to the Gulf of Mexico, where it has already

killed off marine life in a 12,000 square mile area.

To produce the chemicals we apply to our cornfields takes vast amounts

of oil and natural gas. (Nitrogen fertilizer is made from natural gas,

pesticides from oil.) America's corn crop might look like a

sustainable, solar-powered system for producing food, but it is

actually a huge, inefficient, polluting machine that guzzles fossil

fuel -- a half a gallon of it for every bushel.

So it seems corn has indeed become king. We have given it more of our

land than any other plant, an area more than twice the size of New

York State. To keep it well fed and safe from predators we douse it

with chemicals that poison our water and deepen our dependence on

foreign oil. And then in order to dispose of all the corn this cracked

system has produced, we eat it as fast as we can in as many ways as we

can turning the fat of the land into, well, fat. One has to wonder

whether corn hasn't at last succeeded in domesticating us.

Michael Pollan is the author, most recently, of "The Botany of Desire:

A Plant's-Eye View of the World."

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