CORNWALL BRIDGE, Conn. — Here in southern New England the corn is already
waist high and growing so avidly you can almost hear the creak of stalk and leaf
as the plants stretch toward the sun. The ears of sweet corn are just starting
to show up on local farm stands, inaugurating one of the ceremonies of an American
summer. These days the nation's nearly 80 million-acre field of corn rolls across
the countryside like a second great lawn, but this wholesome, all-American image
obscures a decidedly more dubious reality.
Like the tulip, the apple and the potato, zea mays (the botanical name for
both sweet and feed corn) has evolved with humans over the past 10,000 years or
so in the great dance of species we call domestication. The plant gratifies human
needs, in exchange for which humans expand the plant's habitat, moving its genes
all over the world and remaking the land (clearing trees, plowing the ground,
protecting it from its enemies) so it might thrive.
Corn, by making itself tasty and nutritious, got itself noticed by Christopher
Columbus, who helped expand its range from the New World to Europe and beyond.
Today corn is the world's most widely planted cereal crop. But nowhere have humans
done quite as much to advance the interests of this plant as in North America,
where zea mays has insinuated itself into our landscape, our food system — and
our federal budget.
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 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.
So why begrudge corn its phenomenal success? Isn't this the way domestication
is supposed to work?
The problem in corn's case is that we're sacrificing the health of both our
bodies and the environment by growing and eating so much of it. Though we're only
beginning to understand what our cornified food system is doing to our health,
there's cause for concern. It's probably no coincidence that the wholesale switch
to corn sweeteners in the 1980's marks the beginning of the epidemic of obesity
and Type 2 diabetes in this country. Sweetness became so cheap that soft drink
makers, rather than lower their prices, super-sized their serving portions and
marketing budgets. Thousands of new sweetened snack foods hit the market, and
the amount of fructose in our diets soared.
This would be bad enough for the American waistline, but there's also preliminary
research suggesting that high-fructose corn syrup is metabolized differently than
other sugars, making it potentially more harmful. A recent study at the University
of Minnesota found that a diet high in fructose (as compared to glucose) elevates
triglyceride levels in men shortly after eating, a phenomenon that has been linked
to an increased risk of obesity and heart disease. Little is known about the health
effects of eating animals that have themselves eaten so much corn, but in the
case of cattle, researchers have found that corn-fed beef is higher in saturated
fats than grass-fed beef.
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."
Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company
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