Corn you believe this?

Last Updated on Friday, 04 September 2009 11:29 Written by Shawn Dell joyce Friday, 04 September 2009 11:29

Imagine if beings from outer space knocked on your door looking mighty hungry. You would show them the refrigerator, pantry, and cupboards, and they would throw up their hand-like appendages in dismay and mutter "all you have to eat is corn!"

If that sounds far-fetched, go take a peek at the ingredient labels on most of your packaged foods and drinks. I'll bet you'll find corn, in one of its many forms, near the top of the ingredient list. Corn is one of the main ingredients in over 4,000 products found in American homes, even toothpaste. Some processed foods like Twinkies, contain over 36 forms of corn.

Americans have become the true "corn people," more so than the Aztecs or the Incas. If you were to examine a typical American skeleton under an electron microscope, you would find corn isotopes throughout our bones. We have more corn isotopes than any other culture, past, present and perhaps future. Aliens from another planet would think that we worshipped corn because most of our modern food system revolves around it. Americans eat about one ton of corn per person, per year. This is not the delicious sweet corn our local farms grow. This is commodity corn appetizingly called #2 corn, and is the main crop grown in our country. We primarily eat corn in the form of animal products.

Cows; ruminants that naturally eat grasses, are being unnaturally fed corn. Salmon would never eat corn in the wild, but are fed corn on salmon farms. Chickens and pigs were naturally designed for varied diets but instead are fed mainly corn. In 2006, 6.1 billion bushels of American corn went to factory farms and feedlots to be turned into protein by animals, according to the Iowa Corn Promotion Board.

755 million bushels of corn went to make corn sweeteners such as high fructose corn syrup, citric acid, lactic acid, sorbitol, corn syrup, enzymes, starches, and thickeners. Thanks to the versatility of corn, our consumption of processed sweeteners has risen 25 pounds per person, since we began mass-producing the stuff in the early 1970's according to the U.S.D.A. We are also eating almost 20 pounds more corn in the form of meat, 65 pounds more processed grains like wheat and corn, and almost 20 pounds more fats and oils per person, per year according to the U.S.D.A. During this same period, we have seen such food-related illnesses like diabetes, cancers, and obesity rise dramatically.

"Americans eat about one ton of corn per person, per year. This is not the delicious sweet corn our local farms grow. This is commodity corn appetizingly called #2 corn, and is the main crop grown in our country. We primarily eat corn in the form of animal products."

In spite of the surgeon general's warning of an "epidemic of obesity," we are still finding new and more fattening ways to consume corn.

Corn is also the most heavily-subsidized commodity crop we grow. Under the last Farm Bill, mega-corn growers bite off more than a third of farm payments, or about $51.3 billion. It costs Iowa farmers $2.50 to grow a bushel of corn (in 2005), yet they can sell the corn for only about $1.45 (according to Michael Pollan in An Omnivore's Dilemma). Our tax dollars are making up the $1 difference per bushel. This encourages farmers to grow even more corn, which further floods the market and pushes the price even lower. When this heavily-subsidized cheap corn is exported to countries like Mexico, it undermines their food security because their small farmers cannot compete.

Corn is also one of the most environmentally devastating crops to grow. Corn guzzles fossil fuels in the form of fertilizer, insecticides, and heavy processing machinery. Each calorie of corn produced requires a calorie of fossil fuels to grow using standard farming practices. When that corn is converted corn syrup, it requires ten calories of fossil fuels to create one calorie of syrup. When corn is converted to ethanol, we get about 4 calories of fuel energy for every three of calories of corn according to the U.S.D.A.

The hidden cost of fertilizer run-off into our rivers, creating "dead zones" in our lakes and oceans, and the devastation to wildlife by growing a single crop on so much land makes corn extremely expensive to the environment.

Is there any way out of this maize madness Well, you could plead with the aliens to take you with them, or; start demanding that our tax dollars fund saner agriculture policies.

In our country; eating is a political act. Every dollar you spend on food is casting your vote. When you pass up processed foods with all of its hidden corn, and buy fresh, locally-grown foods, you are helping to encourage more sustainable agriculture.

Shawn Dell Joyce is an award-winning sustainability artist and founder of the Wallkilll River School in Orange County, New York.