By: Brita Humphrey
History of Corn
Scientists believe that corn developed
about 7000 years ago in the Tehuacan
Valley of Mexico
 Bred from a wild grass called teosinte

 Small kernels that were spread out
 Extinct today

Without human interference, corn could
not have survived
Ancient Mesoamerican
Civilizations
Maya, Aztec, Toltec, Zapotec, Mixtec, and
Olmec all relied on corn for most of their
sustenance
 Mayans are especially known for their
reliance on corn

 Gift from the gods, their sacred duty to
cultivate it
 Highly valued- jade was used to symbolize it
 Ancient book of the Mayans, the Popol Vuh,
says that humans were made of corn; the
gods had tried other materials, but failed
 70-80% of their diet consisted of corn
North America
Corn spread from Mexico through
extensive trade networks
 Evidence that it was cultivated in the
southwestern part of the United States
about 3200 years ago, and by about 2100
years ago it made it to the eastern part of
the United States
 In 1492 there were about fifty thousand
acres of corn being cultivated by Native
Americans -most prominent in the semidesert regions of what is today Arizona and
New Mexico

Hopi
Understood the art of dry-land farming,
and they deeply respected the corn
 Incorporated corn into their religion
 A special ear of corn was dedicated to
each Hopi child as a “Corn Mother”

Hopi corn plot
in a sand dune
in Arizona
©Imagesofanthropology.com
Hohokam



Lived in the area of modern day Phoenix, Arizona
The ruins of their civilization are known as Pueblo
Grande
Has the remains of an extensive system of canals
used to irrigate crops
 Took advantage of the natural slope of the land as well
as the natural course of the river
 Some of the canals were lined with clay to minimize the
loss of water

The city of Phoenix is built on the ruins of 1,750
miles of ancient Hohokam canals
 The settlers that moved to this area recognized that they
were building their settlement out of the ashes of an old
one; they therefore named their city Phoenix
Across the Sea
1492: Christopher Columbus landed in
what is today Cuba
 He observed the natives preparing corn,
and shipped the new crop back to Spain
 Corn was planted and spread quickly
throughout Europe

 Appealing to the lower class; it was less
expensive than wheat, which was the other
major grain at the time, and it also had a higher
yield than wheat
 By the early 1600’s, corn had spread to nearly
every country in Europe
Africa
Introduced to corn in the seventeenth
century
 Portuguese most likely introduced corn
as a staple food for slaves

 Old World cereals would not grow so close
to the equator, and shipping flour by sea
was too expensive to feed an entire slave
population
 Corn was relatively cheap and had a much
higher yield than any of the Africans grains
United States



1800s : Corn was grown throughout the United
States- therefore, it was rarely shipped across the
country
1828 : With the beginning of the railroad, shipping
costs dropped significantly- made it profitable to
ship corn
Shipping led to the specialization of the American
economy
 Northeast: industry
 West: farming

Three-quarters of the area of the Corn Belt states
(Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Missouri, Minnesota, Ohio,
and Wisconsin) is farmland, and this land accounts
for 25 percent of the nation’s agricultural
production
Hybrid Corn
Majority of farms grow hybrid corn
 “Hybrid vigor”- Charles Darwin

 The first to discover that crossing unrelated
varieties of plants produced hybrid vigor, and
that the descendents of these hybrids did not
have the same vigor

Convergence of two distinct corn lineages
 William Beal
 George Shull
Danger


Hybrids, like the inbred varieties, are all
genetically identical and are therefore subject
to the same risks
Donald Jones states, “These genetically
uniform pure line varieties are very productive
and highly desirable when environmental
conditions are favorable and the
varieties are well protected from
pests of all kinds. When these
external factors are not favorable the
results can be disastrous”
Corn & Gender

In most Native American groups women were
responsible for planting corn while the men
hunted and fished
 Women would make a hole in the soil with a stick,
and then drop four to six kernels in it
 They would sing to the spirits while performing this
task, asking them to grant them a healthy crop

Mexican men were the ones to cultivate corn,
but corn was also linked to women
 Women spent up to a third of their waking lives
making tortillas
 An old Mexican proverb defined a good housewife
as a woman who fed her husband and children well
 Used corn tortillas as a way to express their feelings
Nationality
Because corn was developed
in central Mexico, it could be
considered a national Mexican
food
 Most Americans tend to associate corn more
with Native Americans, as we received corn
from them- Thanksgiving
 No link to nationality?

 Corn has become completely incorporated into
American society, and has spread throughout the
world
Class
When the Spanish conquistadors first
colonized Mexico, they looked down on
corn
 They believed that wheat was the superior
grain; Spanish missionaries even preached
the goodness of wheat as a part of their
attempt to convert the indigenous people to
Catholicism
 Thought that a person’s class, or caste,
was reflected in their diet

 In family portraits meant to catalog racially
mixed castes, darker skinned people were
always portrayed with native foods
Corn Production
Over the years, corn has become an
extremely prominent crop in the United
States
 United States produces a little more
than 40 percent of the world’s corn

Technology

Planter: machine pulled by a tractor, makes
furrows in the soil that are three to four inches
deep, and then disperses the seeds inside
them
 Furrows are thirty inches apart, and one planter can
sow eight to sixteen rows at a time
 Typical cornfield will have 16,000 to 32,000 corn
stalks per acre


Central pivot: device that spins on wheels
around a focal point, spraying water evenly
over the cornfield
Chemical Fertilizers: replenish phosphorous
and nitrogen in the soil
Technology
Planter
Central Pivot
Technology

Combine: contains a corn head, which cuts the
stalk just above the ground
 It can cut up to eight rows at a time
 Once the stalks are cut, they are fed into the
combine where the stalks, ears, and kernels are
separated
 The kernels are stored in a tank in the combine, and
the remaining parts are dumped back on the ground

Grain elevator: Kernels have to be kept at
30◦F after they are dried to prevent mold from
growing
 Often owned by companies that buy corn from many
different farmers; after cleaning it and storing it, they
will sell it to refineries or food processors
Technology
Combine
Grain Elevator
Refinery

Wet milling: kernels are soaked in warm
water, cooked, ground up by machines,
then sent through a series of screens that
separate the kernels into their parts
(embryo, endosperm, and seed coat)
 Used in the making of food and industrial
products

Dry milling: kernels are ground into meal or
flour
 Sold to companies that make bread, cereal, or
other such products
Side Effects





A farmer’s profit is contingent on how much product he
has, which makes it more profitable to produce more
More production drives the price of corn down, which
means the farmer has to produce more to earn the same
profit
This means they have to have more land for cultivation,
which leads to an increase in farm size
The small farmers that cannot keep up are driven out of
business
In 1988, research showed that even though the national
acreage has held steady at 340 million acres, the
average farm size has tripled while the total number of
farms has been cut in half, from 5.9 million in 1945 to
2.2 million in 1985

Political writer George Mills wrote,“The old
definition of a farmer was a man with one
hundred and sixty acres who kept some
hogs and some cows and whose wife kept
chickens and sold eggs and took their milk
to the milk station. Now the average farmer
in Warren County tills eight hundred acres
because you can barely make a living on
three hundred. The land hasn’t gone away
but the farmer has.”
Production Concerns
Environment
 Health

Environmental Concerns

Corn consumes a large amount of the
nutrients in the soil
 If the soil is not allowed to recover and the
nutrients are not replenished, the soil will lose its
fertility and dry out
 According to the Department of Agriculture, onequarter of all soil erosion in the United States
can be attributed to corn alone

Application of chemical pesticides,
herbicides, and fertilizers
 Corn farming today consumes 44 percent of all
chemical fertilizers in the United States and half
of all farm pesticides and herbicides
Health Concerns

Corn is being fed to livestock
 Fattier meat- obesity crisis in the United States
 In a 2010 study from the University of Melbourne, red
meat that comes from corn-fed animals can be
associated with an increased risk of mental health
problems
 Researchers also found that people in Australia
(where the cattle are grass-fed) who ate more beef
and lamb were less likely to have depression or
anxiety

Chemicals
 Can cause cancer and other diseases
Why Hasn’t Production Changed?

In a 1986 Register editorial, Lauren
Soth, a man whose editorials on corn
politics over the last forty years won him
a Pulitzer Prize, wrote “The hard fact
that the USDA top command and the
Fertilizer Institute cannot face is that
agriculture in this country is substantially
overexpanded. So is the agribusiness
superstructure that serves it”
Transnational Corporations



The history of Transnational Corporations goes
back to the mentality of colonialism (especially
European colonialism)
When colonizing a place such as Africa or the
West Indies, they viewed the native ways as
primitive and backward; the English way was much
better, so they forced the natives to follow suit
The best summary of the colonialist attitude can be
seen in a quote from British economist John Stuart
Mill, who suggested that the colonized West Indies
should not be seen as a country, but instead as a
“place where England finds it convenient to carry
on the production of sugar, coffee, and a few other
tropical commodities”
Transnational Corporations

Transnational Corporations also take this
approach when dealing with American farms
 Convenient places for them to make a profit
Focus on efficiency - push heavily for the use of
technology and new innovations
 Ex) Bt Corn: genetically engineered to produce
a toxin against the corn borer

 Companies such as Monsanto advertise this as being
the “miracle” cure for the corn borer, and tell farmers
that if they want their crop to be protected they need
to buy Bt corn
 Monocropping consequences, or Bt toxin problems
Alternative: Organic

One of the key aspects of organic production
is crop rotation
 rotating corn with a legume, especially alfalfa, will
replenish nitrogen in the soil

Using livestock manure is another way to
replenish the nitrogen supply in the soil
 The application of raw manure is forbidden within 90
days of harvesting when the corn is being harvested
for human consumption, but this is typically not a
problem because most field corn is grown for animal
feed anyway
 The most important thing to consider when applying
manure is not to apply it in a way that could
contaminate the water with bacteria or nitratesComposting is a good idea
Organic Pest Control
One option to avoid pests like the corn borer is
to rotate the corn crop with a non-susceptible
crop
 Another option is to use biological controlsintroduce natural pest predators into the
cornfield

 possible controls for the corn borer include the
Ichneumonid, Braconid, and
Trichogramma wasps,
assassin bugs (right), damsel bugs,
mantids, and spiders
Organic Disease Management

Interestingly, the crop rotation practiced on organic farms
along with proper fertility management seems to protect
corn against disease quite effectively
 Studies done in the late 1970s demonstrated that the Diplodia
stalk rot was measurably less severe on organically managed
corn fields in comparison to conventional production

Corn cam also be protected through selection
 Organic and conventional farmers both tend to select varieties of
corn based on regional performance, and so they often find that
resistance or tolerance is bred into the corn itself

There are some new protection methods becoming
available
 Ex) fungus Trichoderma harzianum is now available and can be
used to protect corn from infection by Pythium and Rhizoctonia
species that cause seedling diseases
Critics

Many people are under the misconception that organic
agriculture cannot produce enough food to feed
everyone
 Mindset that large corporations and factory farms have been
pushing

Experts:
 Nobel Prize-winning plant breeder Norman Borlaug: “We aren’t
going to feed 6 billion people with organic fertilizer. If we tried
to do it, we would level most of our forest and many of those
lands would be productive only for a short period of time.”
 John Emsley, a chemist at Cambridge University: “The greatest
catastrophe that the human race could face this century is not
global warming but a global conversion to ‘organic farming’-an
estimated 2 billion people would perish.”
The Truth

Many agribusiness executives,
agricultural and ecological scientists,
and international agriculture experts
believe that a large-scale shift to organic
farming would not only increase the
world’s food supply, but might be the
only way to eradicate hunger
The Truth

Variety of studies that were done
around the world that show organic
farms can produce as much or
even more than conventional farms
 Agricultural scientist Bill Liebhardt from the
University of California-Davis studied 154
growing seasons’ worth of data on rain-fed and
irrigated land in the United States, and found
that organic corn yields were 94 percent of
conventional yields
 In the world’s poorer nations where hunger is
the most prevalent, there is no yield gap
between conventional and organic crops
Is Change Viable?


The government gives subsidies based on the
proportion of the amount of yield to total land areatherefore, farmers with higher yields and larger
farms receive more benefits from the government,
making it even harder for small farms to compete
Oversupply also encourages the processing of corn
 Because corn is so cheap, companies can “add value”
and create a new commodity for a higher price and profit

Farmers who use non-chemical methods for
monitoring soil fertility and pest control by planting
crops such as clover or alfalfa are not given
government support for those crops
Conclusion

Perhaps the best way to change corn production is
to drastically reduce the consumption and
production of corn
 No more grain-fed meat
 Large-scale monocrop production is in direct conflict with
the idea of sustainable agriculture, which works together
with the environment

Government policies
 Give subsidies to farmers that successfully manage the
water and soil without the use of chemicals
 Farmers that do pollute the environment should be fined
 Author Paul Faeth: “The challenge to agricultural policymakers will be to create consistent incentives for all
farmers to take up practices that are in line with what is
most economical for society”