NARRATOR: We transform it
into sugar, fuel, plastic, and enough foodstuff
to fill a supermarket. It doesn't exist naturally. Corn is entirely a
man-made phenomenon. NARRATOR: We grow it
on the farm, in a lab, or even underground, on the
cob, in a can, in a sack, or in a silo. It's a worldwide gold rush. BRUCE BABCOCK:
Ethanol is about ready to take over as the number
one user of corn in the United States. NARRATOR: Now, "Corn,"
on "Modern Marvels." [theme music playing] Corn is the largest agricultural
crop in the United States. Fields of corn cover more
than 80 million acres of land. That's an area larger than
the state of New Mexico. Pass that corn on the cob. It's the delicious treat
we call sweet corn. Lakeside Foods in Wisconsin
has been processing sweet corn for over 100 years. Here, corn is king. This is where corn
comes to get canned. And to make sure your
sweet corn stays sweet, it's an all-out war
against the clock, starting with the
instant it's harvesting. STEVE BURMESTER: The
critical time for processing is within five or six hours. We want to retain the
sweetness of the corn. We don't want the sugars
to turn the starch by being delayed in harvest. This is the first
part of the process as we've had the corn weighed. We're loading it on the dock. Now we're starting to
push it into a conveyor, vibrating conveyor. NARRATOR: This vibrating
conveyor system causes the cops to continually rotate
so the weight of the cob doesn't damage the kernels
resting on the belt. Once inside the
processing plant, the sweet ears of corn journey
into a carnival of precision automation. STEVE BURMESTER: The corn
that comes into the corn room are going into the husker. The husker has six lanes, as the
lanes are separated by a series of neoprene and rubber rolls. What the rolls are doing
in opposite directions are stripping the
silicon of husk material off the ear of corn. Then it goes into a conveyor
to further process it. On average, in an
hour we're processing approximately 35 tons of
corn out of the four huskers. NARRATOR: Surprisingly,
almost all of the delicate corn
kernels remain intact after this seemingly
violent step. Next stop, the cutter. Ears must be positioned
in the correct direction to meet the fast and
furious razor-sharp blades. STEVE BURMESTER: Each cutter has
a separate cutting head, which includes six blades. These blades are moved by a
head in a gear system which will open and close, depending
on the taper of the ear. NARRATOR: Like magic,
the ear goes in, and out come perfect
corn kernels, still in a race to their
ultimate destination. The cob will join the husks and
silks on their own conveyor, bound to become part of a
smorgasbord for livestock. As we convey the kernels over
the next stage of equipment, it is a shaker, which actually
is separating kernels, it is removing pieces of cob,
creating husk material that may still be in the product stream. NARRATOR: Next a series of
wet washers and air cleaners propel the corn into
the inspection area. Cameras reject bad
kernels as they fly by at 600 feet per
minute, and human inspectors perform a final screening. After the kernels
leave inspection they're submerged in
a plume of hot water that kills bacteria and
raises the corn's temperature in anticipation of
the cooking process. Now the sweet kernels
are ready for the can. STEVE BURMESTER: The critical
quality control program is to maintain a certain
headspace in a can. We need a temperature of
a minimum of 80 degrees before this goes to the clicker. We also need a maximum
fill weight of 10.7 ounces. So those are critical factors
in the operation of filling and seeming this can. NARRATOR: In the
cooker, the kernels bounce inside each spiraling
can in 225 degree heat for 16 minutes. 380 cans per minute
enter the cooker. The result, perfect
corn in hermetically sealed cans with a shelf
life of at least three years. Total time elapsed
from its arrival at Lakeside, 25 minutes. This Lakeside
production plant will process approximately
40,000 tons of corn in 60 days or less. Each year in the United States,
almost three million tons of sweet corn are canned,
frozen, and packaged. That is a lot of corn. But here's the surprise. It represents less than 1%
of all commercial corn grown in the United States. So what's growing in
all those corn fields? It's called dent corn, so
named for a physical dimple on the end of the kernel. Sweet corn is best when
it's full of moisture and eaten right off the cob. But dent, commonly
known as field corn, is just the opposite. The US grows almost 364 million
tons of field corn per year. That's about 110 pounds for
every person on the planet. Field corn is an ingredient
in over 3,000 foodstuffs on the grocery store shelf. You'll find it in everything
from breakfast cereals to soda to the batter
on fish sticks, and even yogurt and ice cream. Every box of Corn Flakes
contains 97% corn, and the corn meal
surrounding a corn dog is a fine grind
of dense kernels. Corn starch sticks
energy bars together, and corn oil will
fry your chicken. It's all field corn. And more than 15% of
America's field corn is shipped around the globe. BRUCE BABCOCK: Corn is the most
important crop in the world. Farmers produce more corn than
any other crop by a pretty long shot. Wheat comes in kind of second,
it but kind of distant to corn. And the United States produces
40% of the world's corn. NARRATOR: In fact, a
single US corn farmer provides enough food and
fiber for 143 people. But as much corn
as humans eat, it's animals that chow
down most of it. More than 70% of the annual corn
crop will go to feed livestock. But field corn and sweet
corn aren't the only kernels on the cob. Perhaps the corn with
the most fun appeal is a little delicacy
called popcorn. LOIS GIRTON: We believe that the
oldest kind of corn is popcorn, and that has a hard starch. It also has to have an intact
covering around the outside of it in order for it to
actually be able to build up steam inside the corn and have
the corn pop to make a flake. NARRATOR: Popcorn stores water
in tiny pockets of soft starch. As the kernel is heated
the water turns to steam and the hard outer surface
withstands the pressure as long as possible. Then pop goes the corn. Popcorn comprises less than 2%
of the United States' corn crop and is grown in 25 states. But almost all US corn is
grown in the corn belt, which consists of 12 states
in the Midwest. Indiana, Illinois,
Ohio, and Iowa produce 50% of America's
total corn supply. Iowa is number one. It's very well adapted to
the United States, especially the Corn Belt here
in the Midwest. It's really a tropical
crop, warm season crop. But a growing season here, the
precipitation, the rainfall that we get, the amount of life
that we get, all those things combine to just be a wonderful,
perfect environment for it to grow in. NARRATOR: But no matter
where corn grows, adaptation and versatility
have made it for some, the 21st century's gold. That's partly because
it's not just for food. You'll find corn in
over 400 non-food items, from adhesives to explosives. LARRY JOHNSON: There are
a huge number of uses. And what a lot of
people don't understand is, in terms of starch, there's
more starch used in consumer goods, what we call
bio-based products, than there is as food. 2/3 of the starch
sold as starch ends up in things like charcoal
briquettes, adhesives, paper, plastics. NARRATOR: Plastics? We think of plastic as a
petroleum-based product, but corn will do the job too. NatureWorks in Blair, Nebraska
is a leader in the technology of transforming plant sugars
into performance plastics. It's the first company
to produce plastic from a 100% annually
renewable resource. It's a new biopolymer
called polylactic acid or PLA, that shares its name
with a company that makes it-- NatureWorks. We can produce a crop
of corn in about 100 days, not 100 million years. The production process
from planting a seeded corn to making PLA has a much
smaller environmental footprint than oil-based plastics. We have reduced the consumption
of fossil fuels by 65%, and we produce 80% to
90% less greenhouse gases in oil-based processes. NARRATOR: Field corn is put
through a milling process that separates the starch,
oil, and protein. Enzymes added to the
starch convert it to a type of sugar
called dextrose. The dextrose is then
fermented with yeast to produce lactic acid. A proprietary process
removes excess water and crystallizes the lactic
acid into the NatureWorks biopolymer. CAREY BUCKLES: Within a matter
of days of a corn kernel being received on this site in
the corn milling operation, it's converted into the
NatureWorks plastic. NARRATOR: This bioplastic
is shipped in resin form to customers around the globe. A resin is then converted
into this family of products you see here on this table-- everything from plastic that
can be used to make a gift card to a clear food container
to a foam-type product. We also have drink cups. The fiber made from PLA is
real soft and easily printable. You see some shirts and
other types of garments here behind me. NARRATOR: It's easily identified
by the NatureWorks logo. And this bioplastic
costs about the same to produce as
petroleum-based plastics, while decomposing in as
little as 40 to 80 days when composted properly. For companies like
Wilkinson Industries, making plastic food containers
starts when the NatureWorks bioplastic is sent through
an extruder, where it melts into a sheet of clear plastic. Cooled and measured
for thickness, it's wound onto rolls
and sent to a heating and shaping machine
called the thermal former. Well after the material exits
the oven it goes into the mold assembly, where the mold comes
in contact with the material-- a coat, top and from the bottom. NARRATOR: An air pressure and
vacuum system force the plastic into the mold, and seconds later
the plastic piece is complete. The finished containers
are boxed and shipped, ready to appear on a deli
or bakery shelf near you. Corn may be the Holy
Grail for plastic, but exploiting
its full potential is still on the horizon. Under high heat, NatureWorks'
performance is compromised. So for the time being you
won't find it on a car bumper or on a space shuttle. What you're looking at here
is really the first generation and NatureWorks polymers. We continue to do research
and continue to expand the breadth of application. NARRATOR: 21st century
corn is a marvel of science and agriculture. But it didn't
start out that way. From the grasslands of Mexico
to the mapping of its genome, corn has undergone an
amazing transformation. And to create super
corn is the next leap for both man and kernel. For 180 days, these wild
looking green stalks will flourish under
the North American sky. But the irony is that
corn is anything but wild. Corn has been domesticated,
which means it can't grow without human intervention-- and not just some corn, but
all of it, every kernel. There are no natural
populations of corn like we normally see
in an Iowa cornfield. It doesn't exist naturally. Corn is entirely a
man-made phenomenon. NARRATOR: If we weren't here
to plant, water, fertilize, and harvest it, corn would
disappear from the planet within a few years. The hypothetical scenario
would go something like this. An ear of corn
falls to the ground. Each seed or kernel
struggles to germinate. The tightly packed seeds rob
each other of vital nutrients. Such brutal competition
chokes most if not all successful reproduction. But corn will continue to thrive
as long as farmers nurture it. And companies like Pioneer
Hi-Bred are on the job. For almost a century,
Pioneer has used science to create better corn. As one of the largest seed
producers in the world, they ship corn seed to every
continent except Antarctica. DEAN OESTREICH: This is a seed
crop and not a grain crop. So we bring it in
and carefully handle it to preserve the
integrity of that crop so that when the farmer plants
it the following spring, it meets all expectations
that both we and our farmer customers have. Corn is really an
incredible crop. It's really dynamic in terms
of what we can do with it to improve its characteristics. NARRATOR: One way
Pioneer works with corn is through plant breeding
and the use of hybrid corn. When we talk about hybrid
corn, which is really all the corn that we're using
in modern society today, it's all hybrid. So it starts with two individual
parents that are specifically mated to create great offspring,
and those are hybrids. NARRATOR: Hybrids
are the combination of two distinct
streams of corn, each with its own unique
characteristics. One might have a very
large ear and the other may have a very tall stalk. Individually these strains
are known as inbreds. Crossing these two inbreds
together creates a hybrid. And hybrids often exhibit
heterosis, which means they are better than their parents. This complex biological
phenomenon of heterosis is the cornerstone of
today's corn industry. The wonderful thing
for the seed companies is that if you collect
the seed from a hybrid and plant it again,
it doesn't have the same degree of
superior performance as the hybrid itself. So growers have to go
back to the seed company to buy hybrid seed again. That's actually a good
thing, because seed companies have an incentive to invest
in research and development. What modern day
plant breeders did was they improved the
plant's ability to withstand water stress,
nitrogen deficiency, nutrient deficiency, temperature
stress, insect attack, or disease attack. NARRATOR: It may all
look like modern science, but the breeding of corn
really started thousands of years ago in central Mexico. But back then corn
looked a lot different. In fact, it didn't exist. It began as a wild
grass called teosinte, which only has a few small
kernels and no real cob. An extraordinary
feat, the evolution-- the domestication of a crop. I'm not sure if we decided
to domesticate corn now, whether we could actually
muster the will as a society to do this. It's one of the real gifts
of our ancestors to us. NARRATOR: In fact,
scientists continue to study the teosinte
plant to unlock its evolutionary secrets. They have discovered that
there's just a handful of genes responsible for the major
morphological changes between teosinte and corn. For example, the big
one was the separation of the tassel from the ear. They probably saw mutations
out in teosinte fields-- had the ear and tassel separate,
and they selected for those. They may have noticed that
they yielded more or had some other characteristic
they were looking for. NARRATOR: The tassel,
which produces the pollen, is separated from the ear, which
contains the egg cells that develop into kernels
after pollination. The corn plant could and still
can pollinate itself as well as surrounding corn plants. The Native Americans
achieved the Herculean task of turning teosinte into
corn, and they did it without a powerful
and controversial modern scientific tool-- genetic modification. If you talk about
genetically modified corn, they would also be hybrids, but
their special classification of a regulated product because
we've brought in one single, or maybe a few genes
from another species to help us do something
very specific in the plant. NARRATOR: The revolution
started in 1996 with what has become
known as BT corn. The BT stands for
bacillus thuringiensis, a naturally occurring bacteria. This bacterium
contains a protein toxic to one of corn's
biggest enemies, the European corn borer. We express that
protein in corn in a way that when the insect pest
actually fed on the corn, it died as a result of
taking that first bite. NARRATOR: The corn borer has
the ability to destroy millions of acres of corn. But because of the BT
trait, the economic damage this pest can cause has
nearly been eliminated. Genetic modification is an
exacting laboratory science in which DNA from
one plant or animal is transferred into
the embryo of another. Pioneer Hi-Bred has
over 300 corn hybrids available for farmers
in North America. Many are insect-resistant. Defying bugs like the Western
bean cutworm that attacks the ear, and the Western
corn root-work beetle larvae that attack the roots. In Pioneer's so-called
fast corn greenhouse, the company has accelerated
their evaluation of genetically engineered corn. In one month we'd actually
test about a thousand corn plants carrying about a
hundred different candidates to be traits. When those get
harvested, new ones show up the next week with
new traits to be tested. NARRATOR: While future corn
will certainly start in the lab, the genetically
modified seed will have to be grown in test plots. Its cultivation near
commercial corn fields is heavily restricted, since
wind carries the corn's pollen. If untested, genetically
altered crops could cross-pollinate with
corn bound for the food supply. The result could prove
economically disastrous and potentially harmful. Scenarios might include
massive food recalls, unknown medical reactions in the
general public, and crop loss. In the case of plant-derived
pharmaceuticals, standard greenhouses
aren't secure enough to grow certain seeds. So what about growing corn
where the sun doesn't shine and the temperature
always stays the same? We are driving into
the Marengo warehouse and distribution center, deep in
the hills of southern Indiana. We're literally driving
into the side of a cliff and up above us is
about 160 feet of rock. This was once an
active limestone mine that has subsequently been
converted into a working warehouse. NARRATOR: In limestone
caves, the temperature never fluctuates more
than a few degrees. Sunlight never enters here,
nor do any insects or animals. In this unlikely setting,
founder Doug Ausenbaugh has created a contained
atmosphere to grow any kind of corn for any purpose. It's called controlled
farming ventures-- a blank slate to
create any environment. And it all begins in the 2,000
square foot test facility. For instance, if
somebody was trying to develop a more drought
resistant line of corn and they came upon a valuable
discovery on, say, January the 5th, with 12 inches of
snow outside here in Indiana, we can give them an a 95
degree day with 20% humidity, and we can do that every day
for the next three months while they test their crop. And I can guarantee
you that you're not going to get an emergency rain
to screw up your experiment. NARRATOR: Ausenbaugh's
underground ideas started in response to
pharmaceutical research. The goal-- grow plants
with special proteins for the safer, faster,
and cheaper manufacturing of life-saving drugs. We've been able to design
a system and a facility for about the same price as
a greenhouse that enables you to really control all of the
important variables that affect plant growth. NARRATOR: A growth chamber
for the 21st century. Controlled farming ventures
puts corn into an alien world and makes it thrive. But back above ground, what
happens to all that corn that grows every summer? How does it get into our
cereal, muffins, and donuts? American farmers produce
more than 364 million tons of corn each year. That's enough to carpet 130,000
square miles with kernels. JOANNE WINGERS:
We're farming here and have been in the
business 47 years. We start planting
our corn in April. We always hope to
be done by May 10. That's a target date that
we've set for ourselves, hoping that our yields will
be better in the fall harvest. NARRATOR: This year
the Wingers family farm in central Wisconsin teems
with 1,800 acres of corn. Not a kernel of it is
the sweet corn destined to end up on your dinner table. It's dent corn, part of
the 80 million acres that will be processed into
everything from cereal to rat poison. That is if it doesn't explode. [explosion] During the September harvest
they store some right in their own backyard. You notice three
grain bands behind me. We can store around
250,000 bushel. There's not enough corn storage
at a commercial elevator to store it all for
a whole year supply. So you need to
store your own corn. And then at times of the year
when the market is better, you can take advantage of that. NARRATOR: When the
Wingers are ready to sell, one buyer is just down the road. Didion Milling has been
grinding corn for 35 years. Each truckload Kelly
Wingers delivers holds four acres worth of kernels. And its first destination
is a giant dryer. DALE DRACHENBERG: That dryer
has a series of burners and high pressure fans in the bottom. So the corn is actually
in a layer between what we call skins, two skins. And the corn gets fed
into the top and travels toward the bottom, while hot
air gets pushed up and out through the corn. We run the burners
at about 180 degrees. NARRATOR: Keeping the
corn dry not only keeps it from spoiling too fast, but also
from becoming a deadly hazard. DALE DRACHENBERG: If
you have wet corn that's sitting in a silo very long,
that's a perfect temperature to grow bacteria. So that bacteria, as it eats
the corn, it creates heat. And that heat will eventually
get to a critical mass where you can actually have
a fire, if you don't store the corn properly,
if it's too wet. NARRATOR: And with 21 silos that
each hold the equivalent of 200 truckloads of corn, keeping
this powder keg of kernels cool is a challenge. Disasters like this 1998 grain
elevator explosion in Wichita, Kansas that killed two
people are a tragic example of the potential dangers. DALE DRACHENBERG: Corn can
be kept for up to a year if the storage
conditions are proper. So all these silos are equipped
with aeration fans, where we push cubic feet of air
up through the corn, and that keeps the corn from
having temperature spikes. NARRATOR: These
concrete monsters are as tall as a
12-story building. It takes two square miles of
corn to fill just one silo. DALE DRACHENBERG: Corn is
set down his gravity shoot into the mill system,
and the first stuff that goes through there
is the corn cleaning. NARRATOR: Once
clean, the kernels are cut into small pieces and
sent through a complex system of sifters and air
pressure chambers, on their way to the
grinding machines. In each grinding machine,
two metal cylinders are positioned side
by side and rotate toward each other
at different speeds. Each cylinder has grooves,
which will determine how fine the grind will be. The end product that come
out of all this process would be corn flour, which is
the finest material that we ship. NARRATOR: --and
which might end up in the batter of your buffalo
wings, or even in your donut. They also produce
cornmeal that could cover your English muffin,
or fill your corn chip. And even coarser
cornmeal you can find on the bottom of a pizza. And when that coarse
cornmeal is cooked, it'll puff up and get processed
into your favorite cereals. Even as this corn can
be turned into food, it's sticky characteristics
make it a perfect binder to hold together such
products as porcelain sinks, and even rat poison pellets. Whether Didion's milled corn
becomes a goodie you eat or a product you use, they ship
it to clients around the world be a truck and rail. DALE DRACHENBERG: We're
actually inside a railroad car right now. So the bags that you
see coming across are coming directly
off the packaging line. These bags each weigh about 55
pounds, and a bushel of corn weighs about 56 pounds. The railroad car will hold
between 2,500 and 2,700 of these bags. And that equates to an average
tonnage of about 67 to 70 metric tons per railroad car. NARRATOR: This loading
is just the start of a global transportation
phenomenon that literally helps feed the world. In collaboration with the
United States Department of Agriculture, Didion Milling
is one of the largest suppliers of US food aid to
countries in need. They ship approximately 130,000
metric tons of a cornmeal-based based nutrient-rich
food product that provides essential
calories to sustain life. The same Midwestern corn
nourishing the masses now also feeds our gas tanks. The ethanol craze is here. But is there enough corn to
fuel ourselves and our cars? A near endless line
of semi trucks, filled to the brim with
a bounty of gold kernels. This is the entrance to VeraSun
Energy's ethanol production plant in Charles City,
Iowa, opened in 2007. By the end of the decade, more
than 200 ethanol bio-refineries will dot the landscape from
Washington state to Georgia. Ethanol is a biofuel that
reduces tailpipe carbon monoxide emissions by up to 30%. BRUCE BABCOCK:
Ethanol is about ready to take over as the number
one user of corn in the United States. NARRATOR: Converting corn to
ethanol isn't that complicated. But to mass produce hundreds
of thousands of gallons per day requires a detailed,
coordinated, and streamlined system. Where we're at now
is the starting point, where everything begins. The corn comes in through here. A truck will weigh about
80,000 when it's full, which is about
30,000 for the truck and about 50,000 pounds of corn. NARRATOR: If you're
doing the math, that adds up to 45 million
pounds of corn a week. Speed through here
is very important. Typically when the time
truck pulls under the scale, we sample it, weigh it,
and a truck pulls off is less than a minute. NARRATOR: Once the
corn is okayed, the truck rolls over to the
offloading area, where it dumps its precious cargo into a pit. From the pit, the corn travels
up a grain link, where it flows into the top of the silos. TODD CHURCH: We have four silos. Together they hold about
2.2 million bushels of corn. We have a small fifth silo
here, where we actually screen the corn, get
any impurities out, and we actually grind the
corn into a corn flour. SHANNON ROBINSON: Behind
me is our hammer mills. That's where we grind our corn. We have a dry mill process. Once the corn is
ground into a flour, we send it over a conveyor
where it enters our process. We grind about 120,000
bushels of corn a day. NARRATOR: Conveyors move the
corn flour into the cook area, where it's soaked with water
and enzymes, which break down the corn starch into sugar. For hundreds of years
this basic process has also been used to ferment
alcohol and make liquid like corn whiskey,
now called mash. It cooks at 225
degrees Fahrenheit to kill any bacteria. The corn mash then cools and
travels to an 800,000-gallon fermentation tank, one of
seven where yeast is added. JEN BURTON: You can't make
alcohol without yeast. And yeast eat the sugar,
and one of their byproducts is the ethanol. NARRATOR: After 48
hours of fermenting, it's termed beer, although
you wouldn't want to drink it. After fermentation, one of
the most important processes in ethanol production is
actually purifying the ethanol. We do that behind me. We have three
distillation columns. The first one is what
we call a beer column. We actually separate the
alcohol from the solids. NARRATOR: The mesh runs through
a series of metal plates, and under high heat emits
a water and alcohol vapor. It rises and moves through two
additional distillation columns to purify the
alcohol to 190 proof. The final step sends the
vapor to a molecular sieve. There the water
and alcohol vapors are separated, as the water
is captured and absorbed by millions of
small clay pellets. What's left is
200-proof pure alcohol. Contrary to what you may think,
ethanol isn't anything new. Ironically, it was ethanol that
fueled Henry Ford's early Model T, the first flexible
fuel vehicle. And Ford might be surprised
that after 100 years, ethanol is in the
alternative fuel category. Critics question-- is ethanol
really environmentally friendly? To grow the corn and
convert it to ethanol requires nitrogen for
fertilizer and diesel equipment on the farms, as well as natural
gas at the processing plant. Some experts estimate that it
takes one gallon of fossil fuel to produce 1.3
gallons of ethanol. Still there are already nearly
six million flexible fuel vehicles traveling
America's roads. They're called flexible
because these cars are able to use either unleaded
gasoline or the current ethanol standard, E85. E85 releases 80%
less carcinogens, such as benzene into the
air than unleaded gasoline. In 2006, ethanol use in the
US reduced CO2 equivalent greenhouse gas emissions by
approximately eight million tons. That's equal to removing
the annual emissions of more than 1.2 million cars. But is there enough corn to
feed us and fuel our cars? BRUCE BABCOCK: We're not
going to run out of corn. We have plenty of
corn to go around. And if we start running out
of corn, the price will go up and farmers will plant
more acres to corn. NARRATOR: Detractors
however point out that this will mean less acreage
available for other crops. Nevertheless the corn ethanol
story has an extremely useful co-product. Dried distillers grains
are the portions of corn that can't be fermented, but
they contain highly valued nutrients for livestock. This is where we actually
process the distillers grain and dry the
distiller's grain out. The solids come out into a
conveying system that takes us through two big
rotary drum dryers where we remove all
but 10% of the water. So we have a 90%
dry, solid product. You can see this is a mixture
of protein, fiber, and oil. This is what the animals want. This has always been viewed,
probably prior to this industry as a waste product. But now it's just
a viable product that we use in
the feed industry. NARRATOR: It takes
a mere 65 hours to both process a kernel
of corn into ethanol and ready it for
shipping by rail. And it only took about 100
days for the corn to grow. Much of that corn is hybridized,
specifically to get the ethanol to fossil fuel ratio higher. But in the future it may
be possible to convert even the corn stalks, leaves,
and husks into ethanol fuel through the science of
cellulosic technology. The US government is investing
hundreds of millions of dollars in research to try to
figure out that question. Will cellulosic feedstocks
play an important role in fueling our transportation,
our cars, and buses? We don't know yet. NARRATOR: For now, kernels in
our gas tanks fuel our cars. But corn converts
to another fuel that may not be so good for us. In soda, candy, and
about 2,000 other foods, it's sugar, made
from corn, a.k.a. high fructose corn syrup. generates almost $48 billiony a year. Americans consume more than 15
billion gallons of its drinks. But what does soda
have to do with corn? It's all about the sugar. On average,
corn-based sweeteners comprise more than 50% of
the US sweetener market. And the most prevalent of all
is that super sweet substance, high fructose corn syrup. Corn syrup can be found
in an incredible array of your pantry's products. Everything from simple ketchup
to mayonnaise to sports drinks to salad dressings. NARRATOR: Not to mention ice
cream, bread, and even baby formula. But there's a downside
to the deliciousness. Some have targeted high fructose
corn syrup as a prime catalyst fueling America's growing
problem with obesity. High fructose corn syrup is
manufactured from field corn through a process
known as wet milling. The ultimate goal is to
isolate the starch present in the kernels, since that's
the stuff that will convert to sugar. The first step then
in wet milling then is to take this corn and add it
to an acidic solution of water. And this softens the grain so
that when we go to mill it, what we want to do is keep that
germ in as large a particle as possible. NARRATOR: Like the yolk of an
egg, the germ is the embryo and contains oil, while the
starch resides elsewhere in the kernel. Here a specially
equipped blender grinds the corn
and water solution without damaging the germ. Once blended, the germ
will flow to the surface, because of its high oil content. The isolated germ can then
be squeezed to a pulp, and its corn oil will eventually
wind up in your frying pan. The remaining portions of
the kernel get finely ground. After filtering out the
fiber, the liquid and starch separate in a settling trough. The result, 99.7%
pure corn starch, which is then processed
on a molecular level into both fructose
and glucose sugars. The combination of these sugars
results in both corn syrup and high fructose corn syrup. JACKIE KELLER: The
best way to think of it is a blend of different
sugars, combined with enzymes to make a liquid. NARRATOR: It's plenty sweet. JACKIE KELLER: For example,
you could eat this entire plate of apples. Six of these apples would
equal the sweetening power of this little bit of
high fructose corn syrup that is so nutritionally
bereft of value. NARRATOR: High fructose
corn syrup has made its way into thousands of
packaged food items, and some experts believe its
chemical structure may trick the body in harmful ways. JACKIE KELLER: The theory is
that high fructose corn syrup depresses the
production of hormones that regulate our appetite. So we are actually less
responsive, biologically, to the chemical messengers that
tell our body to stop eating. NARRATOR: And that's something
regular table sugar doesn't do. But some argue there are
other factors that contribute to America's weight, not just
high fructose corn syrup. LARRY JOHNSON: It deals
with calorie intake. It deals with exercise. It deals with a whole
gamut of nutrition. So people who are blaming
one particular product, I feel is erroneous and
a wrong thing to do. NARRATOR: The
dilemma is that it's likely to remain a cheap and
pervasive ingredient for years to come. JACKIE KELLER:
Now the problem is that there are no commercially
economical solutions to replace high fructose corn syrup. NARRATOR: So with corn it seems
that every kernel is filled with promise, debate, and power. From super corn to biofuel to
feeding the masses, what we choose to do with his
golden opportunity might just take us
to a field of dreams.
