Chris wrote:

>Ooops....I guess I dont know how to do the link thing.Sorry.  Anyway its in the
>editorial section of todays Times and its very good.

Here is the link:
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/19/opinion/19POLL.html

And here is the article:

When a Crop Becomes King
By MICHAEL POLLAN

CORNWALL BRIDGE, Conn. — Here in southern New England the corn is
already waist high and growing so avidly you can almost hear the
creak of stalk and leaf as the plants stretch toward the sun. The
ears of sweet corn are just starting to show up on local farm
stands, inaugurating one of the ceremonies of an American summer.
These days the nation's nearly 80 million-acre field of corn
rolls across the countryside like a second great lawn, but this
wholesome, all-American image obscures a decidedly more dubious
reality. 

Like the tulip, the apple and the potato, zea mays (the botanical
name for both sweet and feed corn) has evolved with humans over
the past 10,000 years or so in the great dance of species we call
domestication. The plant gratifies human needs, in exchange for
which humans expand the plant's habitat, moving its genes all
over the world and remaking the land (clearing trees, plowing the
ground, protecting it from its enemies) so it might thrive. 

Corn, by making itself tasty and nutritious, got itself noticed
by Christopher Columbus, who helped expand its range from the New
World to Europe and beyond. Today corn is the world's most widely
planted cereal crop. But nowhere have humans done quite as much
to advance the interests of this plant as in North America, where
zea mays has insinuated itself into our landscape, our food
system — and our federal budget. 

One need look no further than the $190 billion farm bill
President Bush signed last month to wonder whose interests are
really being served here. Under the 10-year program, taxpayers
will pay farmers $4 billion a year to grow ever more corn, this
despite the fact that we struggle to get rid of the surplus the
plant already produces. The average bushel of corn (56 pounds)
sells for about $2 today; it costs farmers more than $3 to grow
it. But rather than design a program that would encourage farmers
to plant less corn — which would have the benefit of lifting the
price farmers receive for it — Congress has decided instead to
subsidize corn by the bushel, thereby insuring that zea mays
dominion over its 125,000-square mile American habitat will go
unchallenged.

At first blush this subsidy might look like a handout for
farmers, but really it's a form of welfare for the plant itself —
and for all those economic interests that profit from its
overproduction: the processors, factory farms, and the soft drink
and snack makers that rely on cheap corn. For zea mays has
triumphed by making itself indispensable not to farmers (whom it
is swiftly and surely bankrupting) but to the Archer Daniels
Midlands, Tysons and Coca-Colas of the world. 

Our entire food supply has undergone a process of "cornification"
in recent years, without our even noticing it. That's because,
unlike in Mexico, where a corn-based diet has been the norm for
centuries, in the United States most of the corn we consume is
invisible, having been heavily processed or passed through food
animals before it reaches us. Most of the animals we eat
(chickens, pigs and cows) today subsist on a diet of corn,
regardless of whether it is good for them. In the case of beef
cattle, which evolved to eat grass, a corn diet wreaks havoc on
their digestive system, making it necessary to feed them
antibiotics to stave off illness and infection. Even farm-raised
salmon are being bred to tolerate corn — not a food their
evolution has prepared them for. Why feed fish corn? Because it's
the cheapest thing you can feed any animal, thanks to federal
subsidies. But even with more than half of the 10 billion bushels
of corn produced annually being fed to animals, there is plenty
left over. So companies like A.D.M., Cargill and ConAgra have
figured ingenious new ways to dispose of it, turning it into
everything from ethanol to Vitamin C and biodegradable plastics.

By far the best strategy for keeping zea mays in business has
been the development of high-fructose corn syrup, which has all
but pushed sugar aside. Since the 1980's, most soft drink
manufacturers have switched from sugar to corn sweeteners, as
have most snack makers. Nearly 10 percent of the calories
Americans consume now come from corn sweeteners; the figure is 20
percent for many children. Add to that all the corn-based animal
protein (corn-fed beef, chicken and pork) and the corn qua corn
(chips, muffins, sweet corn) and you have a plant that has become
one of nature's greatest success stories, by turning us (along
with several other equally unwitting species) into an expanding
race of corn eaters.

So why begrudge corn its phenomenal success? Isn't this the way
domestication is supposed to work? 

The problem in corn's case is that we're sacrificing the health
of both our bodies and the environment by growing and eating so
much of it. Though we're only beginning to understand what our
cornified food system is doing to our health, there's cause for
concern. It's probably no coincidence that the wholesale switch
to corn sweeteners in the 1980's marks the beginning of the
epidemic of obesity and Type 2 diabetes in this country.
Sweetness became so cheap that soft drink makers, rather than
lower their prices, super-sized their serving portions and
marketing budgets. Thousands of new sweetened snack foods hit the
market, and the amount of fructose in our diets soared. 

This would be bad enough for the American waistline, but there's
also preliminary research suggesting that high-fructose corn
syrup is metabolized differently than other sugars, making it
potentially more harmful. A recent study at the University of
Minnesota found that a diet high in fructose (as compared to
glucose) elevates triglyceride levels in men shortly after
eating, a phenomenon that has been linked to an increased risk of
obesity and heart disease. Little is known about the health
effects of eating animals that have themselves eaten so much
corn, but in the case of cattle, researchers have found that
corn-fed beef is higher in saturated fats than grass-fed beef.

We know a lot more about what 80 million acres of corn is doing
to the health of our environment: serious and lasting damage.
Modern corn hybrids are the greediest of plants, demanding more
nitrogen fertilizer than any other crop. Corn requires more
pesticide than any other food crop. Runoff from these chemicals
finds its way into the groundwater and, in the Midwestern corn
belt, into the Mississippi River, which carries it to the Gulf of
Mexico, where it has already killed off marine life in a 12,000
square mile area. 

To produce the chemicals we apply to our cornfields takes vast
amounts of oil and natural gas. (Nitrogen fertilizer is made from
natural gas, pesticides from oil.) America's corn crop might look
like a sustainable, solar-powered system for producing food, but
it is actually a huge, inefficient, polluting machine that
guzzles fossil fuel — a half a gallon of it for every bushel. 

So it seems corn has indeed become king. We have given it more of
our land than any other plant, an area more than twice the size
of New York State. To keep it well fed and safe from predators we
douse it with chemicals that poison our water and deepen our
dependence on foreign oil. And then in order to dispose of all
the corn this cracked system has produced, we eat it as fast as
we can in as many ways as we can — turning the fat of the land
into, well, fat. One has to wonder whether corn hasn't at last
succeeded in domesticating us. 


Michael Pollan is the author, most recently, of "The Botany of
Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World."



.:. Craig