Corn

Corn: just try to avoid it

• Used in corn oil, corn starch, MSG, in all adhesives, to cover textiles and leather, in some alcohol, in most ethanol and to feed almost every animal except fish

• Means you would have to avoid all canned foods, meat, milk, eggs, toothpaste, textiles, leather, soft drinks, margarine, detergents, anything dehydrated, vinegar, yeast, pickles, jams, instant coffee, salt, sugar, beers, gin, vodka, and bourbon whiskey, ethanol, some kinds of plastic

• 3lbs. of corn- in milk, poultry, cheese, meat, butter and the rest- per person per day

History

• Origin in Central America from teosinte• Indians cross bred to create miracle crop• Traveled to the rest of the world through

the Christopher Columbus and trade routes

• Corn is capitalism• Types of corn: sweet, dent, flint, waxy,

indian, popcorn, flour• Multiple colors

Use of Natural Resources

• Corn is planted on roughly 70-80 million US acres annually, with an annual production of about 9 billion bushels and a value of 30 billion dollars

• Minnesota with a total of 753,202 acres used for corn compared with 589,220 acres in soybeans

• Soil loss of 1700 tons/ km2/ year in US and Europe!!!• Corn uses a lot of nitrogen and phosphorus so increases chemical

fertilizer use• fertilizer use increased from an average annual consumption of

1,845,900 tons in the 1890s to an average annual consumption of 32,373,713 tons in the 1960s

• nitrogen accounted for 56.6 percent of the 21.3 million tons of chemical fertilizer nutrients

Water

• a 200-bushel corn crop uses about 600,000 gallons of water — nearly 3,000 gallons per bushel

• 4.2 gallons of water per gallon of ethanol produced

• Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas-—three leading grain-producing states-—the underground water table has dropped by more than 30 meters

Social Cultural Issues

• Corn as religion for Native Mesoamericans• GMOs – different from hybridization; combines genes

that could not be breed in nature, across species- not yet shown to have negative effects- BT corn- allergies

• Old world as more sophisticated so corn has to from there

• Urbanization and Industrialization – Reduced necessary labor hours– Decreased rural community

• Facilitated slavery

Capitalization of Corn

• Throughout the years, corn has been used as a tool of capitalism in the war on poverty, hunger, terror and food for peace (war).

• Anytime America has needed a cheap food corn has been there.

• Tool for green revolution to combat communism and spread capitalism

• Is Corn really to blame?

Economics

• Production function assumes diminishing returns to scale

• Input: capital, land, labor and raw materials • How to get more output or yields out of each

additional dollar spent on inputs • Traditional agricultural economics does not

address the health and safety issues that result from a singularly yield focused market

My project

• LnYield= -7.18392 -.06101LnAvgacre-.21101VPB +.9LnInput +.00407year +.31752SW +.29995SE +.31583SC+.26484WC+.20489NW

• Trying to assess whether regions have much of an effect on corn yield across time (1993- 2007)

• Southwest was the only region not highly correlated with the others and had highest positive effect

• Note: as farm size decreases yield increases• Weather should be included in this regression but we

were unable to find weather data for Minnesota in these years much less regional data

Health and Safety

• 342 calories per 100 gm • Vitamin B (Thiamin, Vitamin B6, Niacin,

Riboflavin, Folate) Vitamin A and Vitamin E , phosphorus, magnesium, manganese, zinc, copper, iron and selenium as well as a small amount of potassium

• Pellegra• Pesticides• Water contamination from fertilizer

Environmental Economics

• the central concern of economics is the allocation of scarce resources

• Discounting

-transfer of cost of degrading environment to the future

• Regulations

Interview

• Degree in Animal science, farmed for 28 years • Siblings stopped farming because of lack of insurance

and not able to compete in market• Too bad sustainable agriculture wasn’t popular when

most farms practicing• Rural desertification- social network• Niche farms• One farm at a time• Farming has changed since the 1960s or even the 1980s• No longer a small farmer

How do we fix it?

• Realize the plant corn is not to blame

• Return to original farming corn techniques

• One farm at a time

• Environmental economics

• Health insurance for farming

• Start-up loans to encourage new farmers