America’s corn crunch

by | Jun 20, 2008


If there’s a silver lining to the disastrous flooding in the US mid-west, then this might be it.  As prices for corn go through the roof, the impacts of diverting so much of it to ethanol production – expectations before the flooding were of fully a third of this year’s crop –  are leading to an increasingly determined push-back from the US food industry.

Of course, the effects of corn-based ethanol on food prices aren’t exactly a newsflash: Mexico City saw riots on this very subject back in February 2007, well before food prices had reached the top of the global agenda.  But the extreme weather event that the US midwest is now experiencing shifts the intensity of debates up by at least two gears.

At present, the FT reports, US biofuel rules require 9 billion gallons of biofuels to be blended into transport fuels this year – mostly with corn-based ethanol.  But the US Environmental Protection Agency can – if it chooses – waive the requirement.  Texas has asked it to do just that – and food producers, as they watch their costs rocket – are asking it to do the same nationally.  As one food company chief puts it, “it is not fair to expect us to compete with a government-subsidised market”. It’s a fair point.

As readers will already be aware, the importance of corn to the US food economy goes far, far beyond cornflakes and tins of Green Giant sweetcorn.  If you haven’t already done so, read Tim Flannery’s excellent NYRB article from last summer entitled “We’re living on corn!” – he’s not kidding:

[Michael] Pollan gives us the example of the chicken nugget, which he says “piles corn upon corn: what chicken it contains consists of corn” (because the chickens are corn-fed), as does “the modified corn starch that glues the thing together, the corn flour in the batter that coats it, and the corn oil in which it gets fried. Much less obviously, the leavenings and lecithin, the mono-, di-, and triglycerides, the attractive golden coloring, and even the citric acid that keeps the nugget ‘fresh’ can all be derived from corn.

So dominant has this giant grass become that of the 45,000-odd items in American supermarkets, more than one quarter contain corn. Disposable diapers, trash bags, toothpaste, charcoal briquettes, matches, batteries, and even the shine on the covers of magazines all contain corn. In America, all meat is also ultimately corn: chickens, turkeys, pigs, and even cows (which would be far healthier and happier eating grass) are forced into eating corn, as are, increasingly, carnivores such as salmon.

If you doubt the ubiquity of corn you can take a chemical test. It turns out that corn has a peculiar carbon structure which can be traced in everything that consumes it. Compare a hair sample from an American and a tortilla-eating Mexican and you’ll discover that the American contains a far larger proportion of corn-type carbon. “We North Americans look like corn chips with legs,” says one of the researchers who conducts such tests.

And of course, turning food into fuel is only half the story: for America’s love affair with corn is also the tale of turning fuel into food – on a truly epic scale. In the US, according to academics David Pimentel and Mario Giampietro, even back in 1994 the equivalent of 400 gallons of oil was expended each year to feed each US citizen.  Meanwhile, another study – this time of Canadian farms – gives an idea of how this energy use breaks down:

– 31%: manufacture of inorganic fertiliser

– 19%: operating field machinery

– 16%: transportation

– 13%: irrigation

– 8%: raising livestock (not including feed)

– 5%: crop drying

– 5%: pesticide production

 Now, you may be wondering: if it takes this much energy to produce corn, how can it make sense then to use that corn as an energy source?  Wouldn’t that seem, not to put too fine a point on it, wantonly defiant of the laws of thermodynamics?  Alas, it would.  Indeed, studies show that the energy-returned-on-energy-invested (EROEI) of corn is actually negative: corn ethanol requires 29 per cent more energy to grow than what you can get out of it.

Rewind!  One more time: corn ethanol requires 29 per cent more energy to grow than what you can get out of it.  You may have seen some pretty mad subsidies in your time, but I’ll wager that none tops this; watching America tie itself in knots thus, one can’t help but feel an awestruck respect for the thunderous public affairs capacity of the US farm lobby.

Still, as we watch the US farm lobby and the US food lobby start to join battle, one might reflect that neither is clearly doing many favours for the public interest.  Corn-based ethanol may be an obviously stupid policy.  But it’s hard to see a diet as rich in red meat, saturated fat and processed food (all derived from corn) as is America’s, as being much more sensible – especially given that the globalisation of that diet is the number one driver of rising global food prices.

Author

  • Alex Evans is founder of Larger Us, which explores how we can use psychology to reduce political tribalism and polarisation, a senior fellow at New York University, and author of The Myth Gap: What Happens When Evidence and Arguments Aren’t Enough? (Penguin, 2017). He is a former Campaign Director of the 50 million member global citizen’s movement Avaaz, special adviser to two UK Cabinet Ministers, climate expert in the UN Secretary-General’s office, and was Research Director for the Business Commission on Sustainable Development. Alex lives with his wife and two children in Yorkshire.


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