Corn: America's Addiction

Before reading The Omnivore’s Dilemma, my opinion on the role that corn played in society was relatively positive.  I saw corn as a staple of American culture, up there with baseball and apple pie.  I remembered warm summer evenings sitting on the front porch of my cottage shucking the yellow ears of corn that would be on our plates later that evening.  As I’ve grown older, the negative things I heard about corn through the internet and television seemed far removed from me as thoughts of corn on summer dinner plates popped up into my mind.  When I heard about the dangers of high fructose corn syrup, I simply groaned and submitted to the industrial complex that produced my food.  After reading the first part of The Omnivore’s Dilemma, I become cognizant of two very important things: how the Americas have survived and thrived through corn, and how prevalent corn is in everything that is around us.

Something that never really occurred to me was the huge importance that corn has played not only in the growth of our country, but in the Americas in general.  First domesticated by the native peoples living in Mexico, corn was treated as something that was larger than life.  Aside from water, it was the most important food to these people and it spread to South America, North America and the Caribbean.  Pollan’s discussion that corn was single reason why the Pilgrims were able to survive was something that I never had thought of previously.  Its ability to be picked quickly or to be stored, and the way that every part of the plant can be used, and its tremendous ability to adapt to surrounding conditions are all qualities that helped the Pilgrims tremendously.  This was eye-opening to me, as I realized that in this sense, the transcendent Zea mays hasn’t really changed since the white man arrived in the Americas. 

 But in another sense, corn has completely changed since then.  We don’t just eat ears of corn, as virtually every meal we eat contains some sort of corn byproduct.  I was shocked to hear Pollan’s description of a chicken nugget, as corn is involved in the entire process.  Corn feeds the chicken, corn starch holds the whole thing together, corn flour is used to make the batter, it’s fried in corn oil, and chemical additives derived from corn are used.  And aside from being heavily prevalent in our foods, corn is also used in our packaging and even in the construction of our houses!  How could one plant dominate our lives so easily and effectively?

            When this question popped into my head, I thought of Pollan’s description of corn farming today.  In a nutshell, corn yields are measured by how much can be produced in a certain amount of room.  In order to produce higher yields, genetic engineers have created hybrid corn varieties that have adapted to “city life,” where they’ve developed thicker, stronger stalks in order to live in a more dense population.  Our use of modern science to aid the incredibly adaptive plant in order to produce these higher yields is a sign that corn’s dominance will continue to play a huge role in our lives.  As the price of corn continues to fall because of an over-abundant supply, farmers have no choice but to continue to bow down to the plant that controls their lives.

            This may sound a scary, because it really is.  It is remarkable how corn has played such a strong role in the Americas for thousands of years.  For me, it is scary to think that we have emphasized the role of just one plant over all others.  As corn prices drop and special interests control the market for agriculture, I have a bad feeling that America’s lust for corn has taken us down a slippery slope that will be difficult to recover from.