Native North Americans believed in the Corn Mother (the first woman to bear offspring, a kind of Eve). After the white man took over and tamed North America, corn became the Midwest’s gift to the country and the world – year after year of bounteous corn crops grown on rich farmland fed us and almost everyone else.
Now corn is a high-priced double whammy. At least it appears that way to the average American consumer progressing through an average weekend.
First, on the average American’s to-do list for the weekend: gas up the car. We all know the story on that. Suffice it to say the price of gas is out of sight. (Hummers, and even your run-of-the-mill SUVs are the dinosaurs of the auto industry — big galoots doomed to extinction but that’s another blog.)
Then on to filling the fridge for the week. A fryer from the supermarket, a gallon of milk from the convenience store – it doesn’t matter where you go. It’s costing more. And if our average American decides to see a movie – alas, even the popcorn at the theatre, never a bargain in the best of times, costs more.
What does corn have to do with all this? Lots. You see, in December 2007 the federal government passed an energy bill mandating that ever larger amounts of ethanol be used to run our vehicles. The bill was passed with seemingly good intentions (if not outcome). It was meant to reduce the US’s dependence on foreign oil and to help curb global warming.
But our lawmakers forgot to take into account that the product of choice for making ethanol in the US is corn, as in an ingredient that food manufacturers large and small turn into Aunt Jemima Syrup, Froot Loops, Fritos and hundreds, if not thousands, of other products. (There are other options for ethanol production. Brazil, for instance, makes it from sugar cane, probably no better a choice, as it is a food crop as well. But ethanol can be made from agricultural byproducts such as corncobs, straw and sawdust. Kraft and General Mills don’t use much of those in their plants, at least I hope not.)
Corn farmers supported the bill of course, but hey, here was a chance to make some extra income. The law awarded farmers money for every bushel of corn that was used for ethanol production. Ethanol manufacturers (everyone from agricultural giant, Archer Daniels Midland – the #1 ethanol producer in the world — to small newly formed companies created to take advantage of the government’s largesse) became preferred corn farmers’ customers, at the expense of long-time corn users/customers such as dairy and poultry farmers, beef ranchers who use corn for animal feed, and food and food-ingredient manufacturers who use corn for people feed.
(Big oil companies like Exxon are trying to fight back the ethanol scourge, no matter what it’s made from, but they seem to have lost their influence in this debate.)
The double whammy (a whammy we’ve smacked our own selves over the head with) is this: We use corn to make foods we eat, we use corn to fill the fuel tanks of our cars and trucks. Food vs. fuel.
It’s not nice to try to fool Mother Corn. She’s known for millennia what corn is for. It’s for sustenance. It’s for eating. It is her gift to us, a gift of food — for human, not transportation, systems.
Comments
Leave a Comment