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The Best Science Writing Online 2012
Showcasing more than fifty of the most provocative, original, and significant online essays from 2011, The Best Science Writing Online 2012 will change the way...
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This essay was posted initially on Ensia.com and is reprinted here with permission.
Nothing dominates the American landscape like corn.
Sprawling across the Midwest and Great Plains, the American Corn Belt is a massive thing. You can drive from central Pennsylvania all the way to western Nebraska, a trip of nearly 1,500 miles, and witness it in all its glory. No other American crop can match the sheer size of corn.
So why do we, as a nation, grow so much corn?
The main reason is that corn is such a productive and versatile crop, responding to investments in research, breeding and promotion. It has incredibly high yields compared with most other U.S. crops, and it grows nearly anywhere in the country, especially thriving in the Midwest and Great Plains. Plus, it can be turned into a staggering array of products. Corn can be used for food as corn flour, cornmeal, hominy, grits or sweet corn. It can be used as animal feed to help fatten our hogs, chickens and cattle. And it can be turned into ethanol, high-fructose corn syrup or even bio-based plastics.
No wonder we grow so much of the stuff.
But it is important to distinguish corn the crop from corn the system. As a crop, corn is highly productive, flexible and successful. It has been a pillar of American agriculture for decades, and there is no doubt that it will be a crucial part of American agriculture in the future. However, many are beginning to question corn as a system: how it dominates American agriculture compared with other farming systems; how in America it is used primarily for ethanol, animal feed and high-fructose corn syrup; how it consumes natural resources; and how it receives preferential treatment from our government.
The current corn system is not a good thing for America for four major reasons.
The American corn system is inefficient at feeding people. Most people would agree that the primary goal of agriculture should be feeding people. While other goals—especially producing income, creating jobs and fostering rural development—are critically important too, the ultimate success of any agricultural system should be measured in part by how well it delivers food to a growing population. After all, feeding people is why agriculture exists in the first place.
Although U.S. corn is a highly productive crop, with typical yields between 140 and 160 bushels per acre, the resulting delivery of food by the corn system is far lower. Today’s corn crop is mainly used for biofuels (roughly 40 percent of U.S. corn is used for ethanol) and as animal feed (roughly 36 percent of U.S. corn, plus distillers grains left over from ethanol production, is fed to cattle, pigs and chickens). Much of the rest is exported. Only a tiny fraction of the national corn crop is directly used for food for Americans, much of that for high-fructose corn syrup.
Yes, the corn fed to animals does produce valuable food to people, mainly in the form of dairy and meat products, but only after suffering major losses of calories and protein along the way. For corn-fed animals, the efficiency of converting grain to meat and dairy calories ranges from roughly 3 percent to 40 percent, depending on the animal production system in question. What this all means is that little of the corn crop actually ends up feeding American people. It’s just math. The average Iowa cornfield has the potential to deliver more than 15 million calories per acre each year (enough to sustain 14 people per acre, with a 3,000 calorie-per-day diet, if we ate all of the corn ourselves), but with the current allocation of corn to ethanol and animal production, we end up with an estimated 3 million calories of food per acre per year, mainly as dairy and meat products, enough to sustain only three people per acre. That is lower than the average delivery of food calories from farms in Bangladesh, Egypt and Vietnam.
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35 Comments
Add CommentIt would be interesting to see what would happen if we stopped massively subsidizing commodity crops like corn and just put in a price floor / ceiling to keep farmers from going out of business and to keep people from starving. In addition, farmers that preserve their topsoil and use sustainable practices on their land should be rewarded while farmers that whittle away the essence of their land should pay for the damages they cause, like the anoxic "dead zone" at the mouth of the Mississippi, among other maladies.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe could also crack down on the horrible waste problems, overuse and abuse of antibiotics and the inhumane conditions associated with Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs). And we could also crack down on slaughterhouses so that we don't have E coli outbreaks in our meat supply.
After we regulate a lot of the barbarism and needless destruction out of our food supply, would grass-fed beef be competitive with the still wasteful system of growing industrial monocrops of corn and feeding it to cattle? Look, as long as we subsidize and look the other way on environmental destruction only to produce artificially cheap meat and "food products" that make us fat, we're giving ourselves a really bad deal in several respects. Ending subsidies would improve the federal deficit while getting rid of the artificial price advantage that industrial meat and processed foods have over more "natural" foods would decrease healthcare costs a great deal over the long term. Subsidizing our own health problems with deficit spending is a really bad idea.
The best approach is to do away with both open and hidden farm subsidies and let the pieces fall into place. Food prices should be a higher percent of family income. A burger should cost $3 and not $1.50.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs for healthy vs unhealthy, etc. Let the market decide. I'm guessing that folks will make better food choices over the coming decades and this will be met by the market. Any intervention by government will be bogus as the food lobby has too much influence on government dietary recommendations....still having kids eat red meat and drink milk everyday.
I grew up on a farm. I have to agree that raising animals in the raccoon infested barn was unhealthy for both animals farmers and consumers. The use of antibiotics is clearly a substitute for rational production methods.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhile artificially cheap meat and processed "foods" aren't all that great health-wise, the fact that they are some of the cheapest calories out there means that people consume them way more than they should. It's this overconsumption brought about by artificially low prices that leads to a lot of the health problems we see today. Eliminating artificial price supports could go a long way in diversifying the American diet, but we'd also need to make sure that healthy food choices are also available, especially in the inner city "food deserts" that occur in many major cities.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMaking our cities and towns more walkable / bikeable would provide more outdoor exercise opportunities that are vanishing in suburban areas and maybe replace some car trips with walking / biking, increasing activity levels in some people.
When Americans chow down, three times a day, every day, they know they're getting a treat pigs like.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis is how one feeds pigs in Big Agro. It's very unhealthy and it's disgusting. And the reason it's in place is because it makes money, and what is the health and well being of the American people, when balanced against the profit of a few oligarchs, who wouldn't eat their own product or feed it to their own children, if you held a gun to their heads.
It's amazing. You can hardly find anyone anymore that thinks producing ethanol from corn is a good idea but the corrupt political system we laughingly call democracy seems wedded to it.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs for wasting calories, as the author would put it, producing meat from corn - well that's what people want. Not so much corn but more meat.
And for those who think food is too cheap in America - well I just shake my head. Life is hard enough for so many in this economy and they want to make it harder.
I think it time to rethink our system that allows someone from a taxpayer subsidized institute to write articles like this that are full of misinformation and have little real world validity. I think that Mr. Foley needs to climb out of the ivory tower and find out some realitites about farming and corn production and our agricultural system, other then what he reads in journal articles.
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Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thissrtolman I'm not in an Ivory tower but agree with the article as the food system is failing to make healthy foods but high profit junk foods instead.
For instance using 10 lbs of corn to make 1 lb of FAT not to mention makes the cows sick vs just feeding them grass as they were evoled to do saves 40% of the crop right there. Plus gives far better, more healthy meat.
Let's remember ethanol might start with 40% of corn but it uses less than 50% of that, just the starch with all the oil, protein, etc left but with a nice extra protein of yeast added making it a far better human food than raw corn is, a very poor food.
So in reality ethanol uses little of the US food crop vs cattle getting most of the 40% of raw corn and the 20% of ethanol corn means it's cattle, not ethanol, driving corn prices plus multiple drought arond the world including here driving up the price.
And that is made worse by speculators betting on futures 10x's the amount of corn actually grown.
I'm getting away from corn fed beef as not healthy enough for me both from the excess fat corn feeding does to shipping, feed lots excesses it's better to buy local fed, butcher beef.
And if they want real productivity they need to bring back the grasslands of the west and put bison back on them needing little input for great food.
Well, by all means, please identify some of the points brought up in this article with which you disagree and provide credible evidence to back up your objections. I'm looking forward to your response.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt's the relative cheapness of the least healthy foods that's the problem. If the government subsidized stuff like arugula and kale up the wazoo like they do corn, I'm sure things wouldn't be so bad. I mean, people are ALREADY paying for these subsidy programs due to government spending priorities and reduced health, so all that cheap, processed "food" isn't a cheap in the long run as people think.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPlease, sir, point out where in the article is misinformation and what about the conclusions are invalid in the real world. You have done nothing but attack the author without presenting any evidence to support your view. Let's have these comments be constructive by actually discussing the work and its merits/pratfalls, not the author.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe fundamental problem mentioned in this great article is the government subsidies! If we ended all the subsidies - with great benefit to the American taxpayers - the rest of the problems would also end - or at least be greatly relieved.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI agree that it is time to rethink America's corn system. Another thing that the author didn't mention is that a big percentage of corn grown in the US is RoundUp ready corn, and is regularly drenched in RoundUp. I don't believe it is good for soil to be regularly soaked in Roundup.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThey could have remade that Oscar winner Argo as Agro and instead of cleverly tricking the resource owner of interest, it is now playing as the American in search of natural nutrition getting the reach-around.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt would take an article longer than Mr. Foley’s to explain and refute all the misinformation provided in both the article and the comments. I'm reminded of Pres. Reagan's famous remark "it's what people "know" that just isn't right that's dangerous". There are so many facts being stated here that are widely accepted but are just flat wrong that it is disturbing. One silly example is the claim that eating corn makes cattle sick. Do rational people actually believe farmers would feed something to their herds that cause them sickness? Corn is an incredible engine of starch and protein production. It is renewable, incredibly efficient - a national treasure. This essay as well as the comments demonstrate well that Americans, including professors, need to visit a farm. If they want to affect farm and food policy, they need to acquire a better understanding that is based on factual information
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCorn is a national treasure, as is the system that produces it. It is unfortunate that so many have completely uninformed opinions, especially the author. It is time for you to get out to the farm!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI agree that corn ethanol is a waste.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHowever, those claiming to feed cattle with grass should go do some math. It doesn't work on the scale necessary. If everyone ate organic people making minimum wage would only be eating rice and beans, if they are lucky.
Nitrogen fertilizers are here to stay and the "dead zones" are so over exaggerated. A couple percent of the Gulf of Mexico is "dead" for a couple months out of the year. Meanwhile, you and I are able to eat at a somewhat reasonable cost. Do some math and figure out how much more we would be paying for food to get rid of this *horrible* dead zone. Its not pretty. Its just something we have to accept.
When you point your finger, you got THREE of them pointing back at you!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Escherichia coli, although considered to be part of the normal gut flora for many mammals (including humans), has many strains. Strain E. coli 0157:H7 is associated with human illness (and sometimes death) as a foodborne illness. A study by Cornell University[24] has determined that grass-fed animals have as much as 80% less of this strain of E. coli in their guts than their grain-fed counterparts, though this reduction can be achieved by switching an animal to grass only a few days prior to slaughter. Also, the amount of E. coli they do have is much less likely to survive our first-line defense against infection: stomach acid. This is because feeding grain to cattle makes their normally pH-neutral digestive tract abnormally acidic; over time, the pathogenic E. coli becomes acid-resistant.[25] If humans ingest this acid-resistant E. coli via grain-feed beef, a large number of them may survive past the stomach, causing an infection.[26] A study by the USDA Meat and Animal Research Center in Lincoln Nebraska (2000) has confirmed the Cornell research."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cattle_feeding#Corn-fed
Sorry, but in agriculture, cash is king, and if they can just pump cattle full of antibiotics and cross their fingers that E. coli outbreaks don't happen all that often, they they'll try to get away with it. I mean, this is the same industry that brought you "Mad Cow" disease by feeding cows to cows, so if something will add a fraction of a penny to the bottom line, they'll try it as long as regulators will let them.
For a century and a half, we've been mining the corn belt -- for topsoil. The Great Plains originally had six or more feet of magnificently rich soil. A few decades ago I read a calculation that, among the other costs of Midwest corn production, one bushel of corn cost one bushel of topsoil. This counts losses to wind and water erosion in addition to the organic material burned out of the soil each year by plowing, discing and other disturbance.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat would you have us do?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI suggest you do some math at the health care cost we as a country are incurring as a result of obesity, which is directly related to the low cost of corn and the meat produced by it (not to mention the environmental cost of growing the corn). Maybe we would be better off if minimum wage people could only afford to eat rice and beans and occasional meat. Our over-consumption of meat is not sustainable and bad for our health. I agree that there is not enough grassland for all of the corn fed cows to switch over to grass-fed. I believe the solution is to get rid of the corn subsidies, and let the cost of beef go up, which will cause people to eat less beef, and thus ranchers will reduce number of cows to a number that can be sustained by grass-feeding, and our country will become less overweight, and our healthcare cost will decrease.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisStop producing ethanol from corn, it's a waste of energy. Stop producing corn syrup, it's high sugar not healthy. Stop feeding cattle with corn, feed them grass. Eat corn and less meat.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere are more cows and pigs than humans by weight, and they eat more food than all of humanity. Then we complain a billion people are starving and earth cannot produce enough food. Nonsense! Slaughter all the livestock and you'll double the grains supply to people plus a lot of beef and pork.
Instead of raising meat products as live animals, why not make use of stem cell research to grow our meat. For example grow a nice rib eye steak or chicken breast. If we can grow ears and skin why not dinner?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt would take an article longer than Mr. Foley’s to explain and refute all the misinformation provided in both the article and the comments. I'm reminded of Pres. Reagan's famous remark "it's what people "know" that just isn't right that's dangerous". There are so many facts being stated here that are widely accepted but are just flat wrong that it is disturbing. One silly example is the claim that eating corn makes cattle sick. Do rational people actually believe farmers would feed something to their herds that cause them sickness? Corn is an incredible engine of starch and protein production. It is renewable, incredibly efficient - a national treasure. This essay as well as the comments demonstrate well that Americans need to visit a farm. If they want to affect farm and food policy, they need to acquire a better understanding that is based on factual information
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisObesity is directly related to caloric intake, not corn subsidies. Im sick of people making excuses for obesity that dont involve self control or personal responsibility.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYet another corn basher. He will have to take a number and get in line. I have always felt the condescension from critcs of ag is really based more in reverse biggotry. An urban vs. rural mindset. Basically, Starbucks coffee drinkers vs. the hometown cafe coffee drinkers. They both like coffee they just go to different places to get it. But such a wide gap between the two. We need to attach responsiblity to those in the Ivory Tower with an agenda. Just follow the money trail with the climate change hoax.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisRe comment #24, That is the most intelligent comment here.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThat wonderful angus steak came from corn, those plump, tender chickens ate corn, that excellent bacon and ham we love, corn. We wouldn't feed it to them and they wouldn't produce the great results if corn weren't good for them. Isn't it odd that corn wasn't a 'problem' until it was mandated to be used for ethanol?
It would take an article longer than Mr. Foley’s to explain and refute all the misinformation provided in both the article and the comments. I'm reminded of Pres. Reagan's famous remark "it's what people "know" that just isn't right that's dangerous". There are so many facts being stated here that are widely accepted but are just flat wrong that it is disturbing. One silly example is the claim that eating corn makes cattle sick. Do rational people actually believe farmers would feed something to their herds that cause them sickness? Corn is an incredible engine of starch and protein production. It is renewable, incredibly efficient - a national treasure. This essay as well as the comments demonstrate well that Americans need to visit a farm. If they want to affect farm and food policy, they need to acquire a better understanding that is based on factual information.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt would take an article longer than Mr. Foley’s to explain and refute all the misinformation provided in both the article and the comments. I'm reminded of Pres. Reagan's famous remark "it's what people "know" that just isn't right that's dangerous". There are so many facts being stated here that are widely accepted but are just flat wrong that it is disturbing. One silly example is the claim that eating corn makes cattle sick. Do rational people actually believe farmers would feed something to their herds that cause them sickness? Corn is an incredible engine of starch and protein production. It is renewable, incredibly efficient - a national treasure. This essay as well as the comments demonstrate well that Americans need to visit a farm. If they want to affect farm and food policy, they need to acquire a better understanding that is based on factual information
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTo be clear, I farm and raise corn, livestock and own a portion of ethanol production. My huge government subsidy on my corn production this year = 1.8% of my gross income on corn acres. My subsidy on crop insurance was 2.8% of my gross income. That taxpayer investment prevented an ad hoc disaster program during one of the worst droughts on record. I raise corn because it is the best crop for the acres I care for. Ethanol happens to be the least expensive oxygenate and best source of octane for liquid fuel. We need correct information when "rethinking systems". Statements like "huge subsidies" don't ring true with me. Is the corn system perfect? Far from it, but real farmers work hard every day to make it better.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf you trade energy as octane as in C-8, H-18 you lose versus C-1 H-4 burning to making C-2 H-5 OH-1.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe only way to make it work? is fiat paper and fake bank debt-credit. Science without environmental economics is a lie.
Sorry ToNYC you are over my head. All I know is refiners make big $$ sub-blending 83 octane no-lead with 115 octane ethanol. Big $$$$. They actually get by selling more crap by adding our good product. Whoa. How ironic? They don't have to refine as clean. Simple enough to understand? Number I hear is just under a $1/gal for this. It may not be env economics but rather blending economics. You are entitled to your opinion though.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGrnhm123 "Directly responsible"? Really? We are fat because we can be. Calories in, exercise out. We can build all the green space and bike trails the people want but you just can't make kids get off their devises. Can we make better choices? Sure, and we should. To make one product the villain is shallow. Why will nobody stand up and tell the emperor he's naked? Eat less, make better choices and exercise. Forcing grass-fed or eliminating HFCS will do little for our wt problems.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt would take an article longer than Mr. Foley’s to explain and refute all the misinformation provided in both the article and the comments. I'm reminded of Pres. Reagan's famous remark "it's what people "know" that just isn't right that's problematic". There are so many facts being stated here that are widely accepted but are just flat wrong that it is disturbing. One silly example is the claim that eating corn makes cattle sick. Do rational people actually believe farmers would feed something to their herds that cause them sickness? Corn is an incredible engine of starch and protein production. It is renewable, incredibly efficient - a national treasure. This essay as well as the comments demonstrate well that Americans need to visit a farm. If they want to affect farm and food policy, they need to acquire a better understanding that is based on factual information, not hearsay and half-truths.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisActually, in the movie http://www.kingcorn.net/ , the show a agriculture spokesperson warn the grower that cattle should not be fed corn for more than 90 days or they will get GERD, just like a human.
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