In addition to contributing to erosion, pollution, food poisoning, and the dead zone, corn requires huge amounts of fossil fuel - it takes a half gallon of fossil fuel to produce a bushel of corn.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Corn is a greedy crop, as farmers will tell you.
Corn is the leading food and feed crop of the United States in geographic range of production, acreage, and quantity of product. The vital importance of a large acreage of this crop, properly cared for, therefore, is obvious.
The older, thinner, and less productive grass lands, however, frequently can be made to produce much larger yields of feed in corn than if left, as they are, in unproductive grass.
Most corn is combine harvested, which means it's picked and shelled in the field - but that's rough on the corn because the husk is more likely to be scratched or cracked.
We're going to move from a commodity economy where you basically grow the same kind of crops - where a kernel of corn is a kernel of corn is a kernel of corn - to an ingredient economy where there will be a kernel of corn that will be designed for fuel, there will be a kernel of corn designed for livestock.
Nitrogen fertilizer is used on all crops produced in this country, but it is a key plant nutrient to produce corn a critical crop to Illinois farmers.
If you could eat portions of pine trees, you could eliminate corn in many ways.
It was necessary to have an even depth of corn on the top compared to the sides, so the air would not take the easiest route and not evenly dry the stored corn.
In corn, I think I've found the key to the American food chain. If you look at a fast-food meal, a McDonald's meal, virtually all the carbon in it - and what we eat is mostly carbon - comes from corn.
Corn is an efficient way to get energy calories off the land and soybeans are an efficient way of getting protein off the land, so we've designed a food system that produces a lot of cheap corn and soybeans resulting in a lot of cheap fast food.