The Corn Industry - Factory Farming, Processed Foods, and Ethanol

Corn! Also referred to as yellow gold is a true American success story. Today the crop dominates the US agricultural sector covering more than 80 million acres concentrated in an area known as the Corn Belt. In 2018 alone the u.s. produced about two and a half tons of corn for every man woman and child living in the states. And yet people in America don't seem to be eating corn for every meal of every day which raises the question - "Where does all that corn go?". The easy answer to that is - everywhere, or almost everywhere. You see corn is used in sodas, processed foods, and burgers (patty bun andn ketchup). It's in fish, makeup, and medicine. It's in the gas tank of your car and on the walls of your home. Corn's impact has become so powerful it has shaped other industries which in turn have become reliant on it for their existence. What made corn so popular was his versatility and unique properties combined with advances in technology genetics and farming methods. There is however a key ingredient which turned corn from an agricultural product into an industrial engine. Despite its success the crop isn't exactly self-sustaining with a large portion of every dollar earned by corn farmers being paid by government subsidies. It is fair to say the today government agricultural policy is a pillar of the industry but this wasn't always the case. Government involvement in agriculture evolved over decades with its origins traced back more than 100 years prompted by the u.s. involvement in a war. The Great War. As a major food supplier to its allies in war-torn Europe the u.s. needed to secure food production for the war effort and it did so by actively encouraging farmers to increase their output. This however was done with no clear agricultural strategy for the years after the war. The problem with this policy became evident in the 1930s. The Great Depression which lasted from 1929 to 1939 led to a unique combination of economic turmoil an oversupply of grain resulting in a significant decline in agricultural prices. During the same period extensive farming and overproduction led to severe ecological damage and soil erosion which devastated land productivity and culminated in severe dust storms in an area which was nicknamed the Dust Bowl. As a result the government introduced commodity price and supply controls. In a nutshell the government will purchase any surplus grain can pay farmers to leave land used in time of oversupply and sell its stock back in times of low yields in order to reduce agricultural price volatility. This changed in the 1970s when Earl Butz was the head of the USDA. He viewed the existing supply policies a socialist and instead actively encouraged farmers try to get big or get out as well as maximize production by planting from fence row to fence row. The idea was to lower prices for agricultural products by encouraging larger size and greater efficiencies in farms which of course would ultimately benefit food producers and suppliers of agricultural inputs such as fertilizer pesticides and equipment. In order to make the policy change more acceptable to farmers who were fearful decreasing prices Butz suggested that producers would leverage foreign trade in times of oversupply. The sale of grain to the Soviet Union in 1972 was proof of concept for that claim. It turned out however that the market was not able to bear the subsequent increase in production. In the 1980's the increased supply caused prices to crash resulting in tens of thousands of farms going bankrupt. The surviving farms had no choice but to increase their output hoping to make up in volume what they lost on price and there was one crop in particular which came to dominate the American Landscape In 2018 the US corn production was estimated at fourteen point four billion bushels with an average yield of 176 bushels per acre with a total harvested area spanning 81 million acres most of which is concentrated in the Heartland region with Iowa in Illinois accounting for a third of the u.s. crop. The spread of corn is actually not that difficult to understand. Not only is it easy to grow in different conditions but it turned out that its byproducts could be used in a wide variety of goods. In addition corn yields have been growing consistently over the last hundred years making the crop increasingly more productive than its agricultural rivals. Perhaps somewhat counter-intuitively the most significant impact of cheap mass-produced corn was on the meat industry. The declining prices of corn which is used as animal feed alongside improvements in breeding technology and pharmaceuticals led to the creation of concentrated animal feeding operations or Cafos where animals are kept in confined spaces for a period of more than 45 days per year. From a business perspective Cafos are significantly more efficient than other livestock operations due to the controlled environment in which the animals are kept in as well as the economies of scale of those facilities. As a result meat dairy and eggs are now produced faster and cost less which has had a positive impact on consumer spending power. If we look at cattle as an example what Cafos did was essentially transforming the traditional ranching model where a cow and a calf would graze on grass spread across 1.5 to 2 acres to a model where thanks to the high caloric value of animal feed hundreds of cows can be gathered within a single acre. This of course resulted in significant improvements in land use efficiency but it did come at a cost. Aside from the obvious animal welfare issues which really deserve a video of their own there are also significant environmental externalities. Here we're going to focus on one of those in particular. Typically grass grazing cattle produce and distribute waste over a large area fertilizing the soil. In Cafos however that waste is significantly greater and stored in a liquid form in a so called Lagoon. Those facilities post substantial risks to the Environment and Public Health as animal waste contains a number of potentially harmful pollutants such as pathogens, hormones, antibiotics, and chemicals. This is especially dangerous in case of flooding as lagoons can overflow and release their waste into the environment which was the case in North Carolina after Hurricane Florence in 2018. In addition despite the fact that manure is generally beneficial to agriculture if applied too frequently or in to large a quantity nutrients can overwhelm the absorptive capacity of the soil and runoff into the groundwater sources. The effects of this type of oversaturation are visible in the annual algae bloom at Lake Erie in the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico extending for over six thousand nine hundred square miles. Overall the effect of corn on animal farming has turned the u.s. into one of the world's largest consumers of animal products this however is not the only way corn has made it into people's diets. The abundance of cheap corn in the 1980s coincided with the sugar price increase in the US market resulting from US trade protectionist policies during the period. Those were the perfect conditions for the rise of high fructose corn syrup a derivative of corn starch as a substitute for sugar. Being a liquid and thus not a perfect sugar substitute corn syrup was still successful uses compatibility with the beverage industry as Pepsi and coca-cola both embraced the corn derivative which lowered costs for their products. Today corn syrup is found in most foods with other sugars and is a very common ingredient in processed foods but the vast majority of people's intake still comes from soft drinks. Despite accounting for a relatively small portion of corn production high fructose corn syrup has still managed to have a significant impact on the US population. Those include an increased chance of weight gain diabetes and heart disease which are claimed to be caused by high fructose as it is metabolized differently than other carbs. To summarize could is actually fair to say that most people do eat corn in some shape or form as part of their daily diet. Despite that the largest corn consuming industry has nothing to do with food. In 2005 the u.s. became the largest producer of ethanol in the world. This was driven by federal legislation aimed at reducing the country's oil consumption and enhancing its energy security. Ethanol is a biofuel and as such it is claimed to be more environmentally friendly than conventional fossil fuels. Although true in theory there is scientific evidence arguing that ethanol is intensifying climate change rather than helping to resolve it. For starters u.s. ethanol is derived from corn however the energy required for his distilleries comes mainly from coal. This makes the sustainability of ethanol highly debatable. And while land is very good at capturing carbon through growing corn it is not as efficient in producing energy. Solar cells in fact can produce a hundred times as much energy from the same acreage as corn ethanol. In addition the ethanol industry consumes about 40% of all corn produced in the States. This results in a higher demand for corn which in turn reduces production of other crops and increases food prices. What is even more bizarre is that the legislation which gave birth to the ethanol industry is no longer relevant as the US through the help of shale oil is on its way to become a net exporter of oil and gas. This raises the question "What is the purpose of the ethanol industry?". This is where politics comes into the picture. You see Iowa is a swing state meaning it can vote Republican or Democrat. And it currently has 44 ethanol plants which help support more than 40,000 jobs in the state. Thus voting against ethanol at this stage is considered as voting against rural America and needless to say in this current political climate no party is willing to do so. It would thus seem that the only reason for the existence of the ethanol industry is to support corn producers at the expense of the rest of the USA. In the end the success of corn is also its worst quality. Given the industry has become so large and so deeply integrated in the country's economy, politics, and way of life it's fair to say that us corn is now too big to fail. As a result factory farming pollution, corn syrup health risks, and ethanol financial costs are simply the necessary price to pay to maintain this model.

Channel: Good to Know

Views: 16,628

Rating: 4.948 out of 5

Keywords: Corn, us corn, corn ethanol industry, high fructose corn syrup origin, hfcs from corn, factory farming in america, cafo usa, Corn subsidies, corn processed foods, ethanol, ethanol production iowa, manure lagoon, environmental issues, corn industry, corn farming history, corn states, history of corn, us corn industry, us corn belt history, ethanol subsidies, american corn, usa ethanol, production of ethanol USA, corn agriculture, corn ethanol energy, farming, cafo, corn

Id: 9eo8CgePW50

Length: 10min 57sec (657 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 05 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/A_Light_Spark]

This is one of my preferred environmental/food documentaries, but I don't think it belongs here. It belongs to /r/documentaries and I believe it's already been posted there.

[u/[deleted]]

Good stuff. But maybe more about the industrialized corn industry than it is about processed food and ethanol. Had to do a college paper on it.

[u/runs_in_the_jeans]

I thought this was going to be about King Corn Karn from the Pro Wrestling game on the NES.

[u/SkidNutz]

This got me feeling kinda corny 🌽

[u/fructose12]

Need to put this in the corn hole hahaha