The Corn Who Would Be King
By Andrew Bosworth
11 November,
2008
Biotechempire.com
Asian civilization is founded on rice. Europe grew up on wheat. America, by contrast, is corn fed.
But while corn is tasty and nutritious, it has been transformed into dietary sludge, the culinary equivalent of plastic. Dr. Mike McGee explains:
"On average, we each consume 200 calories more per day than we did 30 years ago – mostly in the form of hidden corn calories. We consistently eat corn and wash it down with more corn. And if you're poor, it's even worse. As I mentioned with the potato chip/carrots example, foods made with corn, aided by government subsidies, are often the cheapest and contain the most calories. By subsidizing corn, we have pointed those at the greatest risk to foods that are certain to make them sick."1
Not only do we stuff ourselves with corn but we also force feed it to animals, especially cows. If cows had any say in the matter they would prefer to graze on natural grass rather than eat corn - especially corn jacked up with antibiotics, chemicals and, worse, laced with ground up dead cows, which is how mad cow disease gets started. As Dr. McGee continues:
"But as corn became cheaper, cows were confined in pens side by side and force fed, and the results were dramatic. In 1930 it took 4 to 5 years to bring a cow to 1200 pounds for slaughter. Today it takes just 16 months. The unnatural diet has had health implications for the cows, requiring the addition of antibiotics and other medicines to the feed…"2
Of course, people are not force fed, but then again Americans have little choice but to eat food infused with corn, and which, like cattle feed, also happens to be laden with chemicals, hormones, steroids and antibiotics. And Americans, like cows, are also rushing to maturity faster and faster, with young girls menstruating at ever-earlier ages...
Simply put, the United States has turned to corn to replace food, both for humans and animals. So it is not surprising that the nation is turning to corn, which takes up to almost 150,000 square miles of American soil, to replace fuel, for cars. Corn ethanol seemed so promising at first glance: clean fuel, clean air, and less Middle Eastern oil. Midwestern farmers would get rich instead of Arab sheiks: Corn ethanol, rockin' the Kasbah.
The US is already producing around 7 billion gallons of corn ethanol a year, and the US Congress has mandated the production of 36 billion gallons of ethanol a year by 2022. But ethanol is a hoax as vast as the corn fields of the Midwest. It's a complete boondoggle. Politically connected corporations get to siphon taxpayer money and then tell everyone that they are doing the planet a favor, saving it from Four Horsemen of the Petrocalypse.
Family farms will not be producing ethanol, after all. Small family farms were largely wiped out in the credit crisis of the 1980s, supposedly victims of "market forces." However, the resulting Reaganomic "free market" in agriculture was based on even higher levels of agricultural subsidies, on even more corporate welfare, and on even more dubious loans. It was a land grab, a re-enactment of the English enclosure movement set in the go-go 80s.
The corn ethanol craze is pushing up the price of corn and other commodities, as is speculation surrounding this new enterprise. China and India have little to do with increased food prices. The Center for Research on Globalization reported on the World Bank's suppressed study, which was leaked:
"A secret study by the World Bank, which reportedly has not been made public on pressure from the Bush Administration, concludes that bio-fuel cultivation in especially the USA and EU are directly responsible for the current explosion in grain and food prices worldwide. The US Government at the recent Rome UN Food Summit claimed that 'only 3percent of food prices' were due to bio-fuels. The World Bank secret report says that at least 75 percent of the recent price rises are due to land being removed from agriculture - mainly maize in North America and rapeseed and corn in the EU - in order to grow crops to be burned for vehicle fuel."3
Meantime, a more sensible bio-fuel, ethanol from sugar cane, is discouraged by tariffs. The US Congress actually blocks imports of cheaper and more economically sensible sugar-based ethanol from Brazil. Edwin Black, in Internal Combustion, explains how Washington derails true alternatives:
"Brazilian sugarcane ethanol packs eight times the energy of a gallon of corn ethanol. Yet the American importation of Brazilian ethanol is profoundly obstructed by a 54-cent-per-gallon special tax designed to keep this energy solution out of the country in favor of petroleum-dependent corn ethanol. Indeed, even American investment in Brazilian sugarcane ethanol has been limited by Washington-imposed restrictions."4
The production of corn ethanol makes no sense on still another level. Farmers burn enormous amounts of fossil fuels (petroleum-based products) to harvest the corn. In fact, it takes more energy to harvest and produce corn ethanol than is ultimately derived from its use.
Lester Brown, President of the Earth Policy Institute, and no slave to Big Oil, was worried about "starving the people to feed the cars" well before the latest round of food riots. Indeed, one reason food prices are spiking is because corn is a basic ingredient in everything from cereal to soft drinks, and if the cost of corn increases so do most other foods. Furthermore, every acre of corn used for ethanol is one acre less used for food. As Brown argues:
"In some Corn Belt states, ethanol distilleries are taking over the corn supply. In Iowa, a staggering 55 ethanol plants are already operating or are planned. Iowa State University economist Bob Wisner observes that if all these plants are completed, they would use virtually the entire Iowa corn harvest.
With so many distilleries being built, livestock producers fear there may not be enough corn to feed animals, possibly leading to shortages in milk, eggs, beef, pork and poultry. And because the United States supplies 70 percent of world corn exports, importing countries - such as Egypt, Japan and Mexico - should be worried, too."5
But Brown offers up more than doomsday scenarios. He advances workable solutions:
"There are alternatives to this food-based fuels scenario. The equivalent of a 3 percent gain in U.S. automotive fuel supplies from ethanol could be achieved several times over - and at a fraction of the cost - simply by raising automobile fuel-efficiency standards by 20 percent. We can also shift to highly efficient gas-electric hybrid plug-in vehicles. And if we invest in wind farms, feeding cheap electricity into the grid, cars could run primarily on wind energy, and at the gasoline equivalent of less than $1 a gallon." 6
These alternatives, however, make too much sense, and they don't promote corporate welfare and political grandstanding.
Comedian Groucho Marx was right:
"Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it, misdiagnosing it, and then misapplying the wrong remedies."
[1] Dr.
Mike McGee, "Corn-Fed America," Health Politics. http://www.healthpolitics.org/
program_transcript.asp?p=how_much_corn
(2) Dr.
Mike McGee, "Corn-Fed America," Health Politics. http://www.healthpolitics.org/
program_transcript.asp?p=how_much_corn
(3) F.
William Engdahl, "World Bank Secret Report Confirms Biofuel Cause
of World Food Crisis," July 10, 2008.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/
index.php?context=va&aid=9547
(4) Edwin Black, Internal Combustion, New York: St. Martin's Griffin, 2006.
(5) Lester
Brown, "Starving the People To Feed the Cars," Washington
Post, 10 September 2006.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/
article/2006/09/08/AR2006090801596.html
(6) Lester
Brown, "Starving the People To Feed the Cars," Washington
Post, 10 September 2006.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/
article/2006/09/08/AR2006090801596.html
Andrew Bosworth, Ph.D.is the author of Biotech Empire: The Untold Future of Food, Pills, and Sex, and Profit, Power, and the War on Your Health
