“Why all this commotion about corn?” a friend asked earlier this week. “It’s just a commonplace kind of farming isn’t it?”
Not really. The life of modern man is touched hundreds of times a day and vitally shaped by corn and its derivatives. Whenever we read a magazine, walk on a rug, sink into a mattress, mail a letter, enjoy a steak, a pork chop or fried chicken, drink a beer, a soft drink or whiskey, eat bread or candy, light a match or take an aspirin, we rely on corn products.
In Mexico maiz — corn — has long been worshiped as a god. The shape and patterns of corn kernels traditionally were used in architecture, sculpture, ceramics, sacred implements and domestic decoration.
This influence continues as a fervent undercurrent of Mexican rural life. And though urban Mexico may no longer worship corn as a god, or accurately fathom its significance (though many of this nation’s holidays are modified corn festivals), the influence of the grain on the life of man everywhere is more pervasive than the average person is able to calculate.
Booze and antibiotics
Alcohol (both recreational and medicinal), yeast, antibiotics and a great swath of essential chemicals are produced from corn products. Cooking oil, margarine, mayonnaise, potato chips, salad dressings, shortening, soups, paint, varnish, soap, textiles come from or make use of corn germ.
Corn gluten and hulls go into amino acids, corn sugar, corn oil products, corn germ meal, corn sugar molasses and fur cleaner. Starch from corn goes to make adhesives, tile, rubber tires, baby foods, bakery products, printing inks, shoe polish, tobacco, chewing gum, cordials, fruit drinks, ice cream, jams, peanut butter, vinegar, instant tea, marshmallows, dyes, explosives, rayon, breakfast foods, gelatin, rinse, paint remover, beverages, processed cheeses, olives, pickles, vitamin preparations and medicines.
Corn and its thousands of derivatives are so ubiquitous that even in this statistically prone age no one is able to estimate the total value of all the products of which it is a part.
Awesome adaptability
Corn plants possess awesome variability and adaptability. They obstinately flourish at altitudes ranging from 12,700 feet — at Lake Titicaca in the Andes, for instance — to sea level, in regions with short summers and cool climates and in deserts where annual precipitation is less than eight inches.
This hardiness has made corn a significant factor in our lives — its strength to endure makes it relatively cheap to grow. And our uses of corn continue to increase rapidly. Despite the current easing of oil prices, the experiments and production of ethanol continues to show promise in reducing the use of gasoline. In 2013, the United States used 13 billion gallons of ethanol (much of it made from corn, most of it mixed with gasoline in a one to ten ratio). The U.S. corn ethanol target for 2015 is 15 billion gallons.
Production of high-fructose corn syrups swiftly displaced sugar as a sweetener in soft drinks and other foods in the 1980s.
But for all the stunning versatility and robustness of the grain, scientists and knowledgeable farmers continue to worry about the enduring strength and survival capacity of modern strains of corn.
Nearly all corn plants in the United States — that nation accounts for more than one third of the world’s corn production — are balanced on a precariously small genetic base: just six parent lines. A plague of insects, a mutant fungi or corn virus could ravage millions of acres as swiftly as this year’s forest fires have decimated some three million acres U.S. Pacific Coast forests, simply because of this great uniformity of high-yield U.S. fields.
This large cob-fat grain uniformity, and the resulting vulnerability, which is characteristic of most of the world’s major corn producing areas, is what makes the 1978 discovery of ancient, rugged perennial strain of teocintli (the Nahuatl name for corn) in Jalisco so important. This find, by Rafael Guzman, who was then a botany student at the University of Guadalajara and is now a respected agronomist, stunned scientists with its muscly immunity to five of the seven most dangerous corn diseases. This along with its most unique capacity to crossbreed with modern high-yielding strains of corn, make Guzman’s teocintli a discovery of immeasurable significance. The ancient corn strain, now protected at the 140,000-hectare Sierra de Manantlán Biosphere Reserve in Southern Jalisco, is presently under the microscopes of agronomists from the Universities of Guadalajara, Wisconsin and Jerusalem. This rare strain of teocintli possess the potential for changing and protecting food production throughout the world, probably forever.
To see a graphic of all the products made from corn, go to www.businessinsider.com/corn-product-infographic-2012-7.
This is the second of a series.