Currently browsing posts about: Corn

And don’t miss Food Corps‘ gift of Veggie Valentine cards.  Here’s an example:

*******

For 30% off, go to www.ucpress.edu/9780520384156.  Use code 21W2240 at checkout.

We grow lots of corn in the U.S.

• Most of it is genetically modified, meaning that the potentially carcinogenic herbicide, glyphosate, gets dumped all over it in enormous quanitities
• 40% of the corn is used to produce ethanol; this provides an incentive to grow corn in places where water is limited or land is poor.

One argument in favor of using corn for ethanol is that using ethanol for fuel reduces climate change.

But recent reports suggest that using corn for ethanol is a net loss for the planet.

• Jessica Fu writes in The Counter. Corn ethanol was supposed to help the climate. Instead, its production may have made things worse:  Environmental advocates have long warned that incentivizing ethanol production could be a net loss for the planet. A new study suggests that those fears may be well-founded.  Read more
• Virginia Gewin in Civil Eats writes: How Corn Ethanol for Biofuel Fed Climate Change
• C. Jones points out: Iowa is addicted to cornography, but we would all be better off using electric power.
• Dr. Jonathan Foley concludes:   It’s Time to Rethink America’s Corn System: As a crop, corn is highly productive, flexible and successful. As a system, the same is not true.

Comment: Growing corn for ethanol is makes no sense at all.  It’s bad for land and water.  Dumping glyphosate also makes no sense.  We need an agricultural policy that promotes agroecology/regenerative agriculture/sustainability, and that promotes the health of everyone involved in production and consumption.

If you want to know what’s wrong with the US food system, consider corn.

• Hardly any of it is grown for food.
• Most—half—goes for animal feed, domestic or exported.
• One-third goes for ethanol fuel.

Let’s start with the big picture, courtesy of the National Corn Growers Association (FSI means Food/Seed/Industrial).

The USDA explains how much of total corn production ends up as ethanol fuel.

What’s wrong with this?  See The Conversation: The US biofuel mandate helps farmers, but does little for energy security and harms the environment.

If you’ve pumped gas at a U.S. service station over the past decade, you’ve put biofuel in your tank. Thanks to the federal Renewable Fuel Standard, or RFS, almost all gasoline sold nationwide is required to contain 10% ethanol – a fuel made from plant sources, mainly corn.

With the recent rise in pump prices, biofuel lobbies are pressing to boost that target to 15% or more. At the same time, some policymakers are calling for reforms. For example, a bipartisan group of U.S. senators has introduced a bill that would eliminate the corn ethanol portion of the mandate.

This article is worth serious attention for its discussion of the effects of corn growing on profits, carbon-neutrality, indigenous populations, and agriculture policy in general.

Or, to summarize in a corn cob (thanks to Mother Jones):

It’s hard to know where to begin to comment on this.

• Many people in the world do not have enough to eat.
• It would be better for people and the planet if we in industrialized countries ate less meat.
• It would be better for people and the planet if we used fewer cars.

Growing corn for animal feed and automobile fuel makes no sense for human health or that of the enviroment.

In FoodNavigator, I read a report of a study finding that processing of corn into breakfast cereal flakes strips out phenolic compounds and tocopherols (vitamin E) associated with good health.

Just as processing of whole wheat into white flour removes the bran and germ, so does the processing of corn into corn flakes.

The germ and bran (hull) layers of grain seeds contain the vitamins and minerals—and the phenolics.  What’s left is the starch and protein (endosperm).

To replace these losses, manufacturers fortify corn flakes with 10% to 25% of the Daily Value for 12 vitamins and minerals.

This study is further evidence for the benefits of consuming relatively unprocessed foods.

Of particular interest to me is the authors’ disclosure statement:

This work was funded in part through gifts from the Kellogg Company and Dow AgroSciences.

The authors declare no competing financial interest.

This makes this study a highly unusual example of an industry-funded study with a result unfavorable to the sponsor’s interests.  The authors do not perceive Kellogg funding as a competing interest.  It is.  Kellogg (and maybe Dow) had a vested interest in the outcome of this study.

I would love to know whether these authors obtain further research grants from Kellogg and Dow.

Bloomberg News has an interactive infographic on U.S. corn production.  Corn now accounts for 68 percent of US grain-and-oilseed production.

The USDA gives a bit of background on the corn economy.

Scientific American explains why growing all that corn is not such a great idea.

• It’s mostly for feeding animals, not people
• 40% of it goes to fuel for cars
• It uses up lots of natural resources
• It’s monoculture, and vulnerable
• It’s taxpayer supported—at billions of dollars per year

Here’s how it is used.

Time to do some rethinking, no?

If you can find it, watch the film King Corn.  It’s a lot of fun and enormously revealing.

USDA has just released a report on the adoption of these three GM crops in the U.S.  Ordinarily, USDA just tracks corn, soybeans, and cotton.

Here’s a quick summary of trends in alfalfa (green), sugarbeets (red), and canola (blue):

Canola hovers at around 90% of total, sugar beets at 95%, and alfalfa (a perennial) is just getting started at a bit over 10%, but rising.

Why?  According to data summarized by USDA, yields are higher and herbicide use and labor costs are lower.

I’m in Mexico City doing talks for El Poder del Consumidor, the advocacy group in part responsible for Mexico’s soda tax.  I had some time to be a tourist yesterday afternoon and got to see the Diego Rivera murals at the Palacio Nacional.

These are enormous, and stunning.  They deal with the history of Mexico in conflict and in peace.  Look closely, and you see Rivera’s deep respect for Mexico’s traditional food culture.

Along the corridor flanking the main mural, for example, is a painting above a plaque listing what the world owes Mexico—corn, obviously—but also beans, tobacco (oops), chocolate, hemp, and tomatoes.

Other panels also deal with corn—in this one, production.

Another shows how corn is used.

The corner panel at the end of the corridor is devoted to chocolate.

Along the way, quieter panels display the harvest of fruits and vegetables.

Leave the Palacio, cross the Zócolo, and you come to the Coca-Cola bar and toy store.

A brief look at Mexico’s food culture, then and now.

Many of the Milan Expo country pavilions featured gardens or promoted sustainable agriculture.  I liked the one run by Slow Food International.

It’s the last pavilion of all if you come via the red-line subway.  Or, it’s the first if you come by taxi to the East entrance..  

Its raised-bed gardens are lovely in early spring:

They came with instructions:

I particularly liked the hefty guy made out of corn.  He reminded me of Kara Walker’s A Subtlety, or the Marvelous Sugar Baby.

One side of the open-air buildings is devoted to tastings of artisanal products (all pavilions are supposed to serve food).  Another houses a place for lectures.

I’m sorry not to be speaking there, but I will be speaking on the terrace of the U.S. pavilion on May 12 at 4:00: “Cooking Up Change: the American Food Movement.”