Thinking About Corn

Thinking entirely too much about corn, actually.

I'm reading The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan and am really enjoying it. It's a dense read and takes all of the reading strategies I have to get through, but it's a topic I knew nothing about before and I'm learning tons. Ha. Literally.

The first section I'm reading about is all about corn and agribusiness. Up to now, my knowledge of corn has been limited to having seen it on the way to my grandmother's house in Kentucky as a kid and knowing a couple ways of serving corn at meals. Through the learning I've done in the last month, I've begun to understand a little more just how ubiquitous corn is in our diets, whether it's in its whole form, in HFCS, or in the meat we eat. Not to mention all the myriad corn products in our food, like maltose and xantham gum. Not that I really get what those are still, but I do know they're corn-based.

What I've learned in the first section of this book, though, is just how much the U.S. government has helped create all the cheap corn and cheap corn products that are flooding our market. I'd heard of farm subsidies growing up, and understood that they helped farmers with the expensive business of farming. What I didn't know what just how much some products, namely corn and soybeans, are subsidized.

It turns out that the government pays corn farmers the difference between the price they can get for their corn at the grain elevators and what the national minimum price is. For example, if the grain elevator is only paying $1.10 per bushel and the national price is $1.84, the farmer will get a check for $0.74 per bushel they sell. Now, multiply that times, well, a lot and you can see how this adds up. What happens, then, is that farmers set aside more and more acreage for corn and try to get higher and higher yields so they can make money. So, while these deficit payments were originally supposed to help farmers and the supply at the same time, it's ended up hurting both. The farmers are going deeper into debt to raise their yields and keep up production and the supply is flooded, meaning we have way too much corn in the world and we have to find ways of using it up.

What this means is that the scientists are always trying to figure out ways of making corn into new things. Hence, HFCS and all the other corn derivatives are being produced and shoved into just about every product imaginable. Ethanol is being produced and being put into our gas for our cars. (Does this mean we're paying for it twice, with the original subsidy and again with the tax we pay at the pump?) Also, cows and other animals (think: salmon) are being taught to eat corn which isn't a natural process for them. So, your dinner could be made up of corn-fed meat, side dishes made with different corn derivatives, and brought to your table by trucks fueled by ethanol! No wonder they've called us Americans "corn chips with legs"!

Dinner tonight was Indian food. Jeremy is out of town and I'm getting over a bug, so cooking seemed like far too much effort. Back on the wagon tomorrow.