"At Your Service" Newspaper Column

 

Michael R. Milam

Agronomy Specialist and County Program Director

For Daily Dunklin Democrat-At Your Service

December 07, 2007

King corn-another slap at the American farmer

            I have always been awed by the accomplishments of the American farmer. According to the USDA Ag in the Classroom website at http://www.agclassroom.org/teacher/pdf/agcounts/9grade7_8.pdf, the American farmer can produce enough to feed 135 people. In 1830, a farmer could produce 100 bushels of wheat on five acres of land. Today the same farmer can produce that same amount on 3 acres with far fewer labor hours. In 1850, the farmer could produce 100 bushels of corn on 2 and ½ acres. Today farmers can produce that much on less than an acre.

            So you can imagine my surprise when I received the Grain and Seed News from Dr. Bill Wiebold with links to a documentary entitled, “King Corn.”.  You can see a trailer for this movie at http://movies.aol.com/movie/king-corn/31277/synopsis.

A review of this movie with the byline of an article in the Times on Line found at http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article2980693.ece is “How the kings of corn became villains who got America hooked on “liquid Satan”.

            The gist of this article is that farmers are America’s newest villains: peddlers of “liquid Satan, stealers of taxpayers’ money, environmental vandals, and conspirators in a great “green fuel” hoax. Liquid Satan is high fructose corn syrup, stealers of taxpayers’ money refers to farm subsidies, environmental vandals refers to the hypoxia zone in the Gulf of Mexico, and conspirators in the “green fuel” hoax refers to the increased production of ethanol.

            This movie is hailed as the new Supersize Me or An Inconvenient Truth. It is the latest high-profile hit against corn growers and farmers in general. It accuses them of sins ranging environmental destruction to fuelling the obesity crisis in America. High-fructose corn syrup is a sugar substitute found in everything soft drinks to frozen pizzas. The movie insinuates that corn derived cattle feed puts weight on the animals quickly, allowing the mass production of cheap beef.

            Although the documentary was shot in 2004 and 2005, it is being released now to influence the Farm Bill discussion on farm subsidies and to influence the Iowa Democratic Caucus in January.

            A response from Pam Johnson a corn grower from Iowa says so much about the movie and about farming in general. “As a fifth-generation corn grower who is thankful to be able to harvest and provide for an abundant food supply, I have a different story to tell. This story may not make the movies, because presenting our truths and backing them up with facts and figures is just not as entertaining as “fantasy farming.” As in our grandparents’ day, farmers continue to provide an abundant and safe food supply. We believe that providing corn fed meat to our nation’s tables and those of a hungry global population is a good and honorable task. We believe that our children and grandchildren can live long and healthy lives if they eat and drink in moderation and exercise”. So corn producers are not villains but they are heroes. They have helped feed the world.

Corn is the second most important crop in the world behind wheat. However, since it has been genetically modified for insect resistance, it has been projected to be the worlds most widely grown crop by 2020. United States agricultural policy has been criticized recently because as the corn prices increased due to ethanol prices, corn products in third world countries became more expensive. The decision by Congress to increase the amount of ethanol to make us less dependent on foreign oil has impacted everything from energy prices to cost of production of milk and livestock.

            Corn has so many uses. It is used for fuel, Penicillin production, instant food and beverage mixes, recycled paper, intravenous solutions, and soft drinks. It is also used to manufacture tires and for the production of plastics and textiles. It is also a component of many feedstocks for animal production.

            What can you get from one bushel of corn? 1.6 pounds of corn oil and 13.5 pounds of 21 percent protein and 2.6 pounds of gluten meal, 32 pounds of starch or 33 pounds of sweetener or 2.7 gallons of ethanol.

            Dr. Norman Borlaug, winner of the Nobel Prize in 1970, for his work on increasing the world food supply by genetic improvement and the use of inorganic fertilizers to increase yields is not a great fan of critics of mass agricultural production. He is often referred to as the “Father of the Green Revolution. He is credited with saving the lives of millions of people in Asia and Africa. He indicated that it is easy to criticize when your belly is full. He once said,” some of the environmental lobbyists of the Western nations are the salt of the earth, but many of them are elitists. They’ve never experienced the physical sensation of hunger. They do their lobbying from comfortable office suites in Washington or Brussels. If they lived just one month amid the misery of the developing world, as I have for fifty years, they’d be crying out for tractors and fertilizer and irrigation canals and be outraged that fashionable elitists back home were trying to deny them these things.”

 

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