Tuesday, July 10, 2012

Corn

"From the toothpaste you use in the morning to the book you read at bed time, corn plays a part in nearly every aspect of our lives."
(Corn Refiner's Association web site home page (1))

Corn is in nearly every part of our food system as well as the rest of our lives. We feed it to our livestock and our pets. We use it to make, sweeten, or preserve our processed foods or drinks. We use it as a grain in cereals, tortillas, and other things. We use it's oil to fatten and flavor our food. We use it in our vitamin and pill casings. We even use it for in inedible things like our books, our makeup, and for purposes like creating ethanol, a "natural" substitute for gasoline. According to the Corn Refiner's Association, we now have 6,257 uses for corn-based derivatives like high fructose corn syrup and starch (2).

So what? Corn is a natural substance right? We can reproduce it, doesn't that mean that this is sustainable? On a very basic level this is true, but in our current system, corn is not a sustainable ingredient. There are several reasons why, perhaps the most important being that it takes a great deal of fossil fuels to grow corn in our current food system and it takes even more fossil fuel to refine it. The Green Revolution, which lead the way to the unsustainable food system that we have in the U.S. today, took a food system that was based on sunlight as a source of energy and created a food system with fossil fuels as the source of energy. We now rely on fossil fuels to grow our food, which leads to a system where each American consumer is "eating" 400 gallons of fossil fuels each year (3). It takes 400 gallons of fossil fuel just to grow, with our current industrialized food system, the amount of food that each of us eats in a year. This number does not include the amount of fossil fuels that are used during food processing. When we grow our food using massive amounts of pesticides and fertilizers, use machinery to spread them, and transport our food across the country, we expend a great deal of fossil fuel. When we process this food we use even more.

Most types of corn grown in the U.S. only produce one to two ears of corn per stock (4). This gives you an idea of how much land must be used to grow the corn that we use. We use about 86 million acres of land to grow corn (5). The next largest land use for a crop is soy using 63 million acres, then wheat at at 50 million acres, then cotton at 10 million acres (5). To put this in perspective, we use only 2 million acres to produce organic production, and only 4 million acres to grow vegetables (5). This helps us get a good idea of how much of our land we are dedicating to growing corn, a good deal more than any other crop.

Corn, because we use it in so many goods, is often grown using monocropping techniques. Monocropping is the practice of growing a single crop year after year on the same land without growing other plants in the off seasons in order to replenish the soil (6). In 1900, the average American farmer was growing about 5 different types of crops on a single farm. Now, the average American farmer is growing barely more that 1 type of crop on a single farm (7). This is a very dangerous practice both economically and agriculturally because it depletes the soil and leaves the farmer relying on the economic conditions for one single commodity for his or her livelihood (8). We can see, from the acreage of corn in the U.S., that there are many farmers that are relying solely on corn for their own economic livelihood. There is one obvious problem with this; the market price of corn is right at, or below, the production cost of corn, and has been for some time now (9). This is one of the reasons that there are so fewer farmers in the U.S. than there were in 1900 (7). In 1900, nearly 40% of the U.S. population lived on a farm; now, about 1% lives on a farm (7).

With corn farmers unable to make a significant profit on their own, two things happened. First the government must subsidize corn so that fewer farmers loose their farms (9). Second, because corn production has a high fixed cost, the profit per bushel increases the more bushels the farmer produces in a season. So farmers choose to grow more and more corn each year in order to make a profit (9). This perpetuates the problem of low-priced corn because it increases the supply of corn in the market overall. This system leads struggling farmers to depend even more intensely on the very crop that they already must receive subsidies for to break even on.

So what can we do about it? Most of us are not corn farmers and don't feel like we are a part of this system. There are a few things that we can do. First we can advocate for our political figures to address this problem. One of the best ways to do this is to advocate for the changing of the farm bill. The farm bill is discussed and renewed in the U.S. congress every five years, and it includes the plan for allocating subsidies for corn as well as other crops. The farm bill is currently being negotiated in Congress, giving us a great opportunity to advocate for changing the way that our food system works. The farm bill could be designed to give opportunities for farmers to change what they grow without taking great risk. The National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition has a great deal of information about the current debate on the farm bill and what we can do to change it (10).

Another thing that we can do is change what foods we eat. We can eat fewer processed foods, eat more fresh food, and buy foods that we know the origin of. The most important thing is knowing what is in our food. Information is power. In our economy we vote with our dollar whether we want to or not. The money we spend makes a profit for a corporation. At the very least we should know what is in the product that we are voting for. Unfortunately this is also the hardest part of the process of eating better, however, taking it slowly can make it doable. Start with one ingredient. Is there something like corn syrup that you already know of that is easy to identify? Take the first step and notice if any of the food you eat has that particular ingredient in it. When you get the hang of that, add another ingredient, and so on. It takes time to build these habits but it is well worth it. If you decide that you don't want to eat some of the ingredients in your favorite processed foods and can't find them without it, try making them yourself. Again, start with something simple like cookies or mac-&-cheese. Once you make it a few times yourself, you will be surprised by how easy and quick it is. After mastering one processed food, move on to another, and so on. This is a learning process and starting small is the best way to develop lasting change and new habits. Every little bit helps!


Note: Thank you to my sister who was kind enough to help me turn the information I gathered into a nice pretty chart! Thanks Claire!

(1) http://www.corn.org/
(2) http://www.corn.org/publications/statistics/food-industrial-uses/
(3) http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/100303_eating_oil.html
(4) http://extension.usu.edu/htm/faq/faq_q=96
(5) https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AhrkUuVeap6tdEdKMjJtY3FEWlUxM3VjX0RYVkJNSWc
(6) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monocropping
(7) http://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/eib3/charts.htm#fig1
(8) http://dairynutrient.wisc.edu/468/page.php?id=165
(9)http://www.agmrc.org/renewable_energy/ethanol/tracking_the_profitability_of_corn_production.cfm
(10) http://sustainableagriculture.net/blog/farm-bill-hangs-in-balance/?utm_source=roundup&utm_medium=email