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Pollan talks about King Corn
(Thursday, Nov. 7, 2002 -- CropChoice news) --
Christian Science Monitor, 10/31/02: Food may well be one of the biggest stories of the new
century.
Witness the extensive news coverage of mad cow disease and E.coli
contamination, and the controversies over growth hormones and genetic engineering.
Modern-day Upton Sinclairs like Eric Schlossinger have given us exposés on the beef
and fast-food industries. And the organic revolution has reached adulthood, with its
coming out party on the cover of Newsweek last month.
So important has the food story become that the Graduate School of Journalism
at the University of California, Berkeley, recently invited scientists, farmers, and
government officials to talk to journalists about industrial food production,
food-borne pathogens, and other issues in food writing.
Among those panelists was Michael Pollan - well-known for his groundbreaking
books that explore the relationship between humans and nature. In "The Botany of
Desire," Mr. Pollan looks at his garden in Connecticut and sees scheming arugula and
plotting asparagus. We humans might think we control our agriculture and engineer our
environment, but Pollan argues that plants use us as much as we use them. He follows
the trail of the apple and the tulip to show how they cleverly manipulated American
frontiersmen and Dutch merchants to extend their domain.
One plant has gone too far, however, according to the author. Pollan accuses
corn of wreaking havoc on everything from public health to foreign policy.
Corn's place in the US economy is secure, judging by Congress's approval this
spring of an unprecedented $190 billion farm-subsidy package. One of its largest
beneficiaries was corn growers.
In an interview, Pollan talked about why he says that this brazen vegetable is
calling the shots.
What exactly led you to corn?
When you see that a plant has taken over - like grasses and lawns, and like
corn - it has somehow manipulated us. We're doing its evolutionary job, spreading it
around, because it's made itself attractive to us. Corn is like this second great
American lawn - I mean miles and miles of it, all through the Midwest, and even where
I live in Connecticut. This plant is so successful. And the productivity of corn is
astonishing. The reason is that it responds very well to fertilizer. We've gotten the
yield per acre from 20 bushels a hundred years ago to 160 now.
Why is the productivity of corn a problem?
We're producing way too much corn. So, we make corn sweeteners. High-fructose
corn sweeteners are everywhere. They've completely replaced sugar in sodas and soft
drinks. They make sweet things cheaper. We also give it to animals. Corn explains
everything about the cattle industry. It explains why we have to give [cattle]
antibiotics, because corn doesn't agree with their digestive system. It explains why
we have this E.coli 0157 problem, because the corn acidifies their digestive system
in such a way that these bacteria can survive.
And we subsidize this overproduction. We structure the subsidies to make corn
very, very cheap, which encourages farmers to plant more and more to make the same
amount of money. The argument is that it helps us compete internationally. The great
beneficiaries are the processors that are using corn domestically. We're subsidizing
obesity. We're subsidizing the food-safety problems associated with feedlot beef.
It's an absolutely irrational system. The people who worry about public health don't
have any control over agricultural subsidies. The USDA is not thinking about public
health. The USDA is thinking about getting rid of corn. And, helping [businesses] to
be able to make their products more cheaply - whether it's beef or high-fructose corn
syrup. Agribusiness gives an immense amount of funding to Congress.
What about corn growers?
To pull out of that system for them is very hard. It depends on where they
live. They should be diversifying and growing other things, niche crops, and getting
away from commodities. It's very hard to compete with agricultural commodities.
Somebody [at the Berkeley conference] said that 40 percent of farm income is
represented by subsidies. Say the farmer could make more money doing strawberries.
There's no subsidy for that. So he's taking an enormous risk, and he's giving up for
all time his corn subsidy.
What about economies of scale? We've been able to feed more people, democratize
meat.
I don't know if democratizing beef is a good thing. The industry can always
make the popular arguments, because they certainly make things cheaper. But is it
really cheap? Think of the taxpayer, who's actually subsidizing every one of those
burgers. All that corn requires an immense amount of fossil fuel. Corn requires more
fertilizers and pesticides than other crops. It takes the equivalent of half a gallon
of gasoline to grow every bushel of corn. [Almost] everything we do to protect our
oil supply ... is a cost of that burger.
And then there are the health costs. It's not really good for us. Corn-fed beef
has much more saturated fat. So, yeah, it's cheap, if you only look at the price tag.
You talked about how you were encouraged by the idea of engineering corn so it
could be a perennial.
I have no problem with interfering with nature. We live in places where we can
only live by changing the environment. This is the human condition, and I don't think
that's bad. It's working with nature. It's taking the prairie and figuring out a way
to get food out of [it] without having to plow, without having to break the sod. If
you could make corn and wheat and rice perennials rather than annuals, you would just
come and mow it, and get your food that way, instead of having to tear it up every
year. That could help end world hunger.
Many people read your book and think of ... Thoreau.
Like him, I'm interested in looking at my relationship with the natural world,
and doing it in my backyard rather than wandering around in Yosemite or the Amazon.
And he used his everyday experiences to explore his connections to the much larger
world. However, I see us as having much more participation in the natural world. I
don't have as much of a sense of opposition between nature and culture. At this
point, I think we have more to learn by looking at the working landscape: farms and
gardens. I think we have said all we can say about the 8 percent of this country
that's untouched. It's still very important. However, there is this other 92 percent.
We need models of how to take care of that.
You talk about ending our love affair with the lawn.
I call it in my first book a totalitarian landscape. You have wilderness on one
side and the lawn on the other end. I don't think you choose between them. You work
on that middle answer. Even though we think we are subjugating those lawns, we're
probably doing exactly what they want us to do. Because, if you're a lawn, what do
you want? You want some creature to come along every week and mow you so the trees
won't come back. So, in fact we're dupes of our lawns.
Do you have any corn in your garden?
Not this year. I have a big raccoon problem. As soon as the corn gets ripe,
they come in and steal it. So I guess corn isn't winning in every way. But it may be
in the corn's interest to have a raccoon eat it, because they're so wasteful. They
leave more seed around.
There's corn in that?
Of 10,000 items in a typical grocery store, at least 2,500 use corn in some
form during production or processing.
Your bacon and egg breakfast, glass of milk at lunch, or hamburger for supper
were all produced with US corn.
Besides food for human and livestock consumption, corn is used in paint,
paper products, cosmetics, tires, fuel, plastics, textiles, explosives, and wallboard
- among other things.
In the US, corn leads all other crops in value and volume of production -
more than double that of any other crop.
Corn is America's chief crop export, with total bushels exported exceeding
total bushels used domestically for food, seed, and industrial purposes.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/1031/p17s01-lihc.html
Sources: www.campsilos.org; www.public.iastate.edu; www.ontariocorn.org; | |
