U.S. Corn
July 2008
I don’t know where the expression “Knee high by the 4th of July” came from, but it refers to the height the corn crop should be by the time our most patriotic of summer holidays arrives. That Independence Day and this crop are linked in verse is no accident. It has been the case now for several decades, but at no time is it more apparent than now, how deeply invested the federal government is in the “health” of the nation’s corn harvest.
I recently watched the documentary film “King Corn” wherein two idealistic, college graduates, Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis, decide to investigate the journey of corn from field to mouth in a style that can only be referred to now as “Pollan-esque”. They’ve taken their inspiration from Michael Pollan’s book The Omnivore’s Dilemma. In it, the author buys a steer so he can follow it from range to feedlot, and eventually to burger. The creators behind “King Corn” rent a precisely measured acre in an Iowa field, marked out from the larger holdings of a local farmer.
The film’s major premise is to highlight how much this wildly successful and rangy grass has found its way into our food supply, and how it impacts our health, both bodily and environmental. By considering that corn is the primary ingredient in feed for animals raised for meat, the most prevalent and cheapest of sweeteners, a source of cooking oil, and an ingredient in hydrogenated fats and countless food additives, we start to get a sense of how deeply the typical American diet is based on corn. Any reader of Pollan’s book will have taken this point easily from the 120+ pages he devotes to the topic. What Cheney and Ellis do is bring in a visual element, which can’t be duplicated in print or in the imagination, and a cute narrative. It is essentially a buddy flick, but with a mission.
When the film was made, only a few short years ago, corn prices remained low. In the wake of escalating fuel pressures and boosted ethanol production, the price of corn has surged dramatically. But when our heroes are doing their “farming” it quickly becomes clear that the price farmers are getting for their crop hardly covers the expense of raising it. What tips them over the edge in terms of profits, is the government subsidies paid out to farmers. In the last decade alone, $50 billion has gone to corn producers. The subsidy program has encouraged them to focus on increasing output. The result is a town literally drowning in corn (dramatic footage of overflowing silos and great pyramids of corn kernels make the point) but barely eking out a living. As fuel resource pressures have grown, the federal interest in the corn crop has grown with it.
Spiking oil prices and diverting crops from stomachs to cars, are major contributing factors to what is being termed the global food crisis. My mother perhaps put it best when she asked plainly: Where is the wisdom in putting our food into our gas tanks?
The impacts of corn production go beyond food and fuel of course, and are ultimately absorbed by our environment. Monocropping this commodity is squandering one of the nation’s most valuable resources – Iowa’s topsoil – a rich, black bed as deep as three feet in some areas, capable of packing tremendous nutrition into whatever grows from it. Unfortunately, we insist on growing empty calories. In the recent and calamitous floods, this wealth has been washing away, and spreading the nitrogen fertilizers and waste from industrial hog operations around with it. As if this toxic stew were not enough bad news, there is yet another detriment to monocropping. It may indeed be changing our weather, and could have played a role in t he “500 year storms” that flooded the Midwest.
The word on the fields, from an Iowan agronomist is that the shift to monocropped corn has radically changed the hydrologic cycle in the state. Historically, the region was planted in seasonal grasses and other plants which took up water and gave it off at different rates and at different times of year. The result was that evapotranspiration rates for the region as a whole were fairly stable throughout the year, except for a drop during the dormant winter, so storm cycles were steady and the intensity of storms was moderated. But when you rip all of that up and plant the whole region in corn, you’ve got a whole state’s-worth of plant life taking a big gulp of water at the same time during the planting season and then letting it out all together in one giant collective plant-sigh. Now you’ve got a huge amount of water vapor entering the atmosphere at the same time. The result is much more extreme seasonal storm patterns at two times during the year when the transpired water vapor starts raining down (late spring/early summer and late fall) and drought at other times of the year when corn is sucking up all the water (late summer).[1] When one considers that it is not just Iowa that is planted nearly exclusively with this crop, but great swaths of the broad middle of our country, the idea that this could influence our climate patterns seems probable.
To return for a moment to the film, I’d like to share two images, which have stuck with me in particular. The first was gruesome. The filmmakers visit a veterinary research facility studying the effect of a grain diet on cattle. With her head locked carefully into a device that resembles nothing more than a modern day stocks, the cow in question has been fed a mixture of corn silage and kernels. From the side of the immobile beast, a channel has been cut so that scientists can reach into one of her stomachs and assess the impact the feed has had on her. One does so, right on camera, and pulls out a handful of corn and fodder, barely broken down. Cattle are ruminants, and their series of stomachs is evolved to break down grasses into caloric energy. A grain rich diet causes innumerable health problems for them. The scene captures with exquisite sorrow the unhealthy mess we are making of these animals lives, and by extension, our own.
The second scene I haven’t been able to put out of my mind is when Cheney and Ellis visit a well-appointed nursing home, where Earl Butz was living out his days. I am ashamed to say that I didn’t know Nixon’s Secretary of Agriculture was still living at the time (He died on February 2nd of this year). But there he was in faded, regal glory. His famous message to farmers in the 1970’s was “Get big, or get out!” urging them to grow commodity crops from “fencerow to fencerow” and contributing mightily to the exponential rise of agribusiness and the demise of small, biologically diverse family farms. There is no doubt that Butz’ policies ushered in the era of high fructose corn syrup and cheap food. And it is with fondness that he reflects on his actions, declaring that these changes created a system where feeding oneself became a minimal part of any household budget – freeing up volumes of capital for so many other things. As the price of food was driven down, and the quality with it, we were gifted the ability to shop.
From today’s vantage point, flooding and poisoned fertile plains, one nation, mono-cropped, skyrocketing fuel and food prices, this victory churns in my belly like a heavy wad of indigestible corn…
[1] With special thanks to Elanor Starmer, Food Policy expert for Food and Water Watch, for sharing this fascinating tidbit and breaking it down so eloquently.
