Before the 1970s, high fructose corn syrup was basically unheard of. Products contained mainly beet or cane sugars, which were generally imported from several countries around the world. The United States keeps nearly all sugar it grows locally, in addition to very large imports of the commodity. This was a perceived problem in the early seventies. Imports were expensive, and importing this large amount of cane and beet sugar was a necessary evil that caused food prices to stay fairly stable. A man named Earl Butz was appointed as the Secretary of Agriculture under Nixon. The goals of the administration included reducing the amount of money the average American spent on food. This would allow them to consume more in the other areas of their lives, stimulating the economy. So how exactly did they decide to do this?
Butz was well known for encouraging a monoculture attitude when it came to farming. That is, he wanted farmers to plant their entire field with the same crop. Now, anyone who's up on their nineteenth century Irish history knows one of the big problems with monocultures - vulnerability to a single pathogen or other irritant. This is circumvented quite well by new farming technologies such as pesticides and genetic engineering, making the issue nearly moot.
Nearly.
Now, what crop did you suppose Butz and the USDA decided to focus on? What crop is the one you're most used to seeing when driving through rural areas in practically any state, in particular the nation's breadbasket? Corn, of course. The United States grows nearly half of corn worldwide. This is mainly because of extensive use of high fructose corn syrup; for this reason, the corn you see growing in most fields is engineered to be perfect for this purpose.
High Fructose Corn Syrup has recently surpassed cane and beet sugar in American consumption.
Modern field corn is different from sweet corn. It has a distinctly chalky taste, as it has sacrificed the majority of its nutrition (proteins and minerals) for starch, which makes it more useful for being broken down. This is not a unique phenomenon to corn - most crops now are engineered not for nutrition, but for yields. Under Nixon and Butz, farms were encouraged to buy and sell in bulk. Subsidies, which had been based on the size of farms in the past, were now based on yield. While this may seem reasonable at first, if one looks at the practical effects, it means the more efficient a farmer is in growing crops, the more money the government bestows upon him. Thus, it's no longer a goal to farm nutritious or high quality crops, but rather to grow as much as possible.
The shift in governmental policy coincided with the rise of big agriculture business. Farmers were advised by the USDA to "get big or get out" by Butz, and the end of feasibility for the family farm fast approached. Large corporations were able to purchase chemicals and equipment in bulk, saving them millions. Small and family farms struggled to keep up with the ridiculous efficiency of these titans, and were quickly forced to tap out of the business for good. In turn, the corporations used farming techniques like genetic engineering to increase the size of their yield (and decrease the nutrition of their crops) and thereby increase the size of their subsidy check.
Americans noticed that the quantity of food went up for their dollar while completely blind to the quality rapidly diminishing. Obesity has since become an epidemic as the demand was increased by the supply. Larger portions of cheaper, less nutritious food were offered to the masses; more food was necessary to supplement that lack of nutrition. Hence, obesity has become America's most prevalent health problem. People not only now have extremely high caloric intake, but the computer revolution has caused sedentary lifestyles to become the norm.
And it's no surprise that when the makers of the documentary King Corn had their hair tested, they averaged 56% corn in composition. The documentary sees two college friends and their quest to know the corn industry inside and out. In the process, they move to an Iowa farm to grow an acre of corn, receiving $28 in Federal subsidy for their effort. The two plant 31,000 kernels of corn in eighteen minutes thanks to modern technology; they spend about two hours farming over the entire year. Of course, owning a thousand or fifteen-hundred acres requires far more effort, but not nearly as much as it used to. The film is amazingly informative and I highly recommend it.
The corn watertower in my hometown of Rochester, Minnesota.
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