Conquest of the world with corn

^{Chris Nicely}

Maize currently accounts for more than one tenth of the world's harvest. The United States alone has enough cornfields to cover all of Germany. But while the other crops we grow come in different varieties, over 99% of the corn we grow is exactly the same type: Yellow Dent # 2 (dent corn). This means that humans grow more dent corn than any other plant on the planet. So how did this single cultivar of this plant become the greatest success in agricultural history?



About 9,000 years ago, corn, also called maize, was first domesticated from teosynth, a herb native to Mesoamerica. Teosynth's hard seeds were barely edible, but its fibrous husk could be made into a versatile material. For the next 4,700 years, farmers bred the plant with larger cobs and edible kernels. As corn spread throughout America, it took on an important role, and many indigenous societies began to refer to "Mother Corn" as the goddess who created agriculture.

When Europeans first arrived in America, they avoided the strange plant. Many even believed that this was the source of the physical and cultural differences between them and the Mesoamericans. However, their attempts to grow European crops on American soil quickly failed, and the settlers were forced to expand their diets. Maize soon crossed the Atlantic, where its ability to grow in a variety of climates made it a popular grain in many European countries.



But the newly created United States remained the world's grain capital. In the early 1800s, strains of different sizes and tastes were produced in different regions of the country. However, in the 1850s these unique varieties proved to be difficult for train operators and for traders to sell. Trade shields at railroad junctions like Chicago encouraged farmers to grow one standardized crop. That dream would finally come true at the 1893 World's Fair where James Reed's dent corn received the Blue Ribbon.

Over the next 50 years, Yellow Dent swept the country. After the technological development of World War II, mechanized harvesters became widely available. This meant that a batch of corn that previously took a full day to harvest by hand can now be harvested in just 5 minutes. Another wartime technology - chemical explosive ammonium nitrate - also found new life on the farm. With this new synthetic fertilizer, farmers could plant dense corn fields year after year without the need for crop rotation and nitrogen replenishment in the soil.



While these advances made corn an attractive crop for American farmers, US agricultural policies limited the amount that farmers could grow to ensure high selling prices. But in 1972, President Richard Nixon lifted those restrictions by negotiating massive grain sales to the Soviet Union. With this new trade deal and World War II technology, corn production has become a global phenomenon.

This mass of corn has inspired numerous corn teas. Cornstarch can be used as a thickener for everything from gasoline to glue, or processed into an inexpensive sweetener known as high fructose corn syrup. Corn quickly became one of the cheapest animal feeds worldwide.This allowed the production of inexpensive meat, which in turn increased the demand for meat and corn feed. Today, people eat only 40% of all cultivated corn, while the remaining 60% support consumer industries around the world.



And yet the spread of this miracle culture had a price. Water sources are contaminated with excess ammonium nitrate from corn fields. Corn accounts for most of the carbon emissions associated with agriculture, in part due to the increased meat production it provides. Using high fructose corn syrup can contribute to diabetes and obesity. And the rise of monoculture farming has left our food supplies dangerously vulnerable to pests and pathogens — a single virus could infect the world's stocks of this ubiquitous crop. Corn has evolved from a dense grass to an essential element of the world's industry. But only time will tell if this will lead us into the labyrinth of instability.