Cleared patches in hillside woodlands are greening as summer rains wet the milpas, where villagers grow their basic food crop. Corn is planted and tended now much as it was centuries ago: a few kernels and a bit of fertilizer poked into the ground with a sharpened stick, a step away, another few grains inserted along a crooked row in the rocky soil.
Zea mays
When the pilgrims immigrated to this continent, Indians taught them how to raise corn using dead fish for fertilizer. Europeans had "broadcast" their grain over the land, but that doesn't work with corn. Grains must be shelled from the cob and inserted into topsoil. Without added nitrogen, corn leaches the soil and produces a poor crop. Indian farming was efficient, diligent and respectful of their valuable product.
The mythology of corn among indigenous tribes continues to the present in the ritual dances of cultures founded on corn. The ancient Maya of Guatemala, Belize and Yucatan placed four kernels in each planting mound, one honoring each of the four Bacabs, the gods who hold up the sky at the four corners of earth. In Aztec sacrificial ceremonies, when a priest cut out a human heart, it was thought to be like a cob of maize being husked from its sheath. Huicholes still honor corn in their symbolic yarn paintings. It holds a sacred place in tribal beliefs throughout Central and South America where it is the basic food staple. In Europe and North America, corn is appreciated more for its ability to marble the steak and plump the turkey.
North American farming methods changed radically during the twentieth century. When 90% of U.S. citizens lived on farms, human labor assured corn was planted in spaced hills with a measure of fertilizer in each. Four grains to the hill, "one for the groundhog, one for the crow, one for the cutworm, and one to grow" was the cynical dedication rather than to the four gods of the Maya in the 1930's, U.S. and Canadian farms began to be mechanized. Farmers who couldn't afford tractors sold their land and moved to the city. Small farms were consolidated to increase the efficiency of big, expensive machinery. Hybrid corn brought uniformity to the crop, with superior varieties to stand erect when planted in thick rows stretching across the corn-belt.
By 2001, zea mays(the botanical name for both sweet and feed corn) has evolved along with humans over the past 10,000 years. We still don't know what pre-historic farmers did to turn the self-seeding teosinte grass, with its small self-contained grains, into a plant with huge pod-less kernels. Nothing like it exists in uncultivated nature. Corn grows fast and responds extremely well to hybridization. Indians throughout the Americas treasured great variety in their own stores. Popcorn made elegant necklaces, sweet corn was eaten off the cob, dent corn could be roasted or ground to make porridge, pone and nutritious tortillas. They selected only the choicest seeds to plant and altered genes to suit climate and altitude.
A principal product is corn oil, a cooking fat and ingredient in margarine, mayonnaise and salad dressings. Corn syrup is the basis of candy, ketchup and commercial ice cream. It is used in processed meats, canned fruits, condensed milk, many modern beers, gin and vodka. Corn starch improves the consistency of baby food, jams, pickles, vinegar, yeast. Most soft drinks and snack manufacturers have switched from sugar to corn sweeteners. Children may get up to 20% of their daily calories from corn.
The wholesale switch to corn sweeteners in the 80's seems to have marked the beginning of an epidemic of obesity and Type 2 diabetes. A recent study at the University of Minnesota found a high diet in fructose (corn sugar) as compared to glucose (cane sugar) elevates tri-glycoside levels shortly after eating, a phenomenon linked to an increased risk of obesity and heart disease.
Mexico currently taxes soft drinks sweetened with high fructose corn syrup. As the health benefits of sucrose become more apparent, perhaps Mexico's stance against fructose imports will seem more reasonable.
King corn is a versatile, nutritious grain we love. But too much of a good thing in supermarket cans, boxes, bottles and cartons is becoming a bizarre modern curse.
had insinuated itself into the landscape, the food supply, even the federal budget. President Bush signed a ten-year, $190 billion farm bill under which taxpayers will pay farmers $4 billion a year to grow even more corn, despite the fact there is a constant struggle to get rid of the surplus. Archer Daniels Midland, Tyson, Con Agra and Cargill will reap the subsidy, not family farmers who are being bankrupted spending $3 per bushel to raise corn that brings $2 on the market. Agribusiness finds ingenious new uses other than fattening beef, hogs and chickens - everything from ethanol to vitamin C to biodegradable plastics.
