The history of the world according to corn Chris A. Kniesly
Corn currently accounts for more than
one tenth of our global crop production.
The United States alone has enough
cornfields to cover Germany.
But while other crops we grow
come in a range of varieties,
over 99% of cultivated corn is the
exact same type: Yellow Dent #2.
This means that humans grow
more Yellow Dent #2
than any other plant on the planet.
So how did this single variety
of this single plant
become the biggest success story
in agricultural history?
Nearly 9,000 years ago, corn,
also called maize,
was first domesticated from teosinte,
a grass native to Mesoamerica.
Teosinte’s rock-hard seeds
were barely edible,
but its fibrous husk could be turned
into a versatile material.
Over the next 4,700 years, farmers bred
the plant into a staple crop,
with larger cobs and edible kernels.
As maize spread throughout the Americas,
it took on an important role,
with multiple indigenous societies
revering a “Corn Mother”
as the goddess who created agriculture.
When Europeans first arrived in America,
they shunned the strange plant.
Many even believed it was the source of
physical and cultural differences
between them and the Mesoamericans.
However,
their attempts to cultivate European crops
in American soil quickly failed,
and the settlers were forced
to expand their diet.
Finding the crop to their taste,
maize soon crossed the Atlantic,
where its ability to grow in diverse
climates made it a popular grain
in many European countries.
But the newly established United States
was still the corn capital of the world.
In the early 1800’s, different regions
across the country
produced strains of varying
size and taste.
In the 1850’s, however,
these unique varieties proved difficult
for train operators to package,
and for traders to sell.
Trade boards in rail hubs like Chicago
encouraged corn farmers
to breed one standardized crop.
This dream would finally be
realized at 1893’s World’s Fair,
where James Reid’s yellow dent corn
won the Blue Ribbon.
Over the next 50 years, yellow dent
corn swept the nation.
Following the technological
developments of World War II,
mechanized harvesters became
widely available.
This meant a batch of corn that previously
took a full day to harvest by hand
could now be collected in just 5 minutes.
Another wartime technology, the chemical
explosive ammonium nitrate,
also found new life on the farm.
With this new synthetic fertilizer,
farmers could plant dense fields
of corn year after year,
without the need to rotate their crops
and restore nitrogen to the soil.
While these advances made corn an
attractive crop to American farmers,
US agricultural policy limited the
amount farmers could grow
to ensure high sale prices.
But in 1972, President Richard Nixon
removed these limitations
while negotiating massive grain
sales to the Soviet Union.
With this new trade deal
and WWII technology,
corn production exploded into
a global phenomenon.
These mountains of maize inspired
numerous corn concoctions.
Cornstarch could be used as a thickening
agent for everything from gasoline to glue
or processed into a low-cost sweetener
known as High-Fructose Corn Syrup.
Maize quickly became one of the
cheapest animal feeds worldwide.
This allowed for inexpensive
meat production,
which in turn increased the demand
for meat and corn feed.
Today, humans eat only 40% of
all cultivated corn,
while the remaining 60% supports consumer
good industries worldwide.
Yet the spread of this wonder-crop
has come at a price.
Global water sources are polluted by
excess ammonium nitrate from cornfields.
Corn accounts for a large portion of
agriculture-related carbon emissions,
partly due to the increased meat
production it enables.
The use of high fructose corn syrup may
be a contributor to diabetes and obesity.
And the rise of monoculture farming
has left our food supply dangerously
vulnerable to pests and pathogens—
a single virus could infect the world’s
supply of this ubiquitous crop.
Corn has gone from a bushy grass
to an essential element of the
world’s industries.
But only time will tell if it has led us
into a maze of unsustainability.