The film "King Corn" will be aired on PBS this week. I'm looking forward to it. I love corn. I just don't like what we do with corn. In honor of "King Corn" I came up with some reasons to just say NO to corn.
What do the cost of food, the food riots, overweight Americans, drug resistant disease and possibly the die off of bees all have in common?
Disclaimer: This is a biased post. I am pro small family farms and I am pro honey bees. I belong to a CSA. I am a lifetime honey eater. I go through a large jar of the stuff every month. I am firmly opposed to High Fructose Corn Syrup.
Update: Here is a link to a more thorough diary on corn written earlier this week by CSI Bentonville: http://www.dailykos.com/...
Here are some reasons to say NO to corn.
- Farm (Corn) subsidies. These Government handouts are meant to help regular small family farms make a living growing corn and yet many of these farms are going out of business. According to the Heritage foundation (CSI Bentonville rightly points out that this is a conservative organization which begs the point that this is NOT a bipartisan issue!), the majority of farm subsidies go to large corporate farms.
- Nutrition. Farm subsidies do help "Big Food" by giving them more cheap crap to put onto the store shelves. Corn, as grown and processed today makes people fat. It's in almost everything that you eat, particularly if it's cheap.
- Antibiotic resistance. Corn makes cows fat (just like people) and therefore tasty but cows are meant to eat grass. Corn makes them ill and keeps them on a short life-time of antibiotics which leads to drug resistant disease both in cows and the people who eat them.
- The Ethanol Industry. Ethanol deserves a diary of it's own. Fortunately someone else has already written a great one: http://www.dailykos.com/...
There have been indications of a "corn shortage" due to ethanol demand every year for the past few years. Since our corn surplus has traditionally been put into almost everything that we eat, all of our cheap crappy food is likely to go up in price...but not by much. The real effect is felt elsewhere in poorer countries like Mexico. Farmers have been given yet another incentive to switch to growing corn at the expense of other crops and an even bigger incentive to hoard corn.
All of this contributes to the higher prices of food and to the shortages of the food that those same farmers are no longer growing...for everyone..in the world. Guess who is going to get blamed for this? You, you commie pinko red doper diaper baby environmentalist librul for insisting that we reduce our dependence on oil instead of drilling in Alaska.
- Bees. We are in the midst of Massive bee colony collapse. The evidence for this link is anecdotal but the consequences could be catastrophic, adding to the already precarious food shortage. Imagine the current food riots taking place in the third world taking place in your own back yard (this shouldn't be too hard). Although GM corn has apparently been "ruled out" by researchers as the cause of bee die-off there are many people who disagree. These are people who work with bees. High Fructose Corn syrup is often fed to domestic and transported hives over the winter. Transported hives are not only suffering stress but poor nutrition.
"All we know is bees on corn syrup didn't make it, and those that ate their own honey and sugar cane did make it," Collins said.
Using just HFCS can make the honeybees sick.
- High Fructose Corn syrup is not food. It's bad for you. It's bad for bees.
You can join a CSA to help farmers to grow something besides corn and make a decent living. CSA's are also an affordable viable way to improve nutrition in poor communities. Most take food stamps and in exchange, provide the fresh vegetables.
Sources & resources:
The Omnivore's Dilemma
Fructose and Beekeeping explained..
King Corn.
An important article about bee die-off, corn syrup and global warming.
An excellent run down of the farm bill
Heritage Foundation (Disclaimer: according to other foodies, this is a neo con organization and a crappy source)
Big Corn and Ethanol (Again, it was pointed out to me that this is a neocon site that probably thinks that you diaper doper babies are responsible for all of this)