Our Mother, Our Life

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Our Mother, Our Life

• From Much Depends On Dinner,
• by Margaret Visser,
• HarperCollins, 1986

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Background The Importance of Corn
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The modern North American supermarket is an
important expression of North American culture.
The desire for choice, variety, uniformity,
convenience, cleanliness, and cheerfulness all
rolled into one. The single most important food
product in the modern supermarket, the product
that drives North American food culture, is corn.
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• Few things have been untouched by corn in some
  way or another, for example
• Meat is largely corn, as is milk and other dairy
  products. Livestock and poultry are fed and
  fattened on corn.
• Frozen meat and fish is coated with a light layer
  of corn starch to prevent drying.
• Much brown and gold food colouring is from corn
  soft drinks, puddings, ice creams, etc.
• All canned foods are in a liquid that is made in
  part from corn.
• Almost all paper cartons and wrappings are coated
  with a corn based product.

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• Corn oil is used in a wide variety of products
  including cooking oils, margarine, soap,
  insecticides, salad dressings, and even in MSG.
• Corn syrup is the basis of candy, ketchup, ice
  cream, processed meats, soft drinks, beer, gin
  and vodka, soups and sauces. It provides body
  or mouth feel when it is absent normally in a
  product. It prevents product decay and is used
  when long shelf life is required.
• Corn starch is found in 100s of products
  including baby foods, preserves of all kinds,
  yeast, pet foods, toothpastes, detergents. Only
  1/3 of corn starch is used in food products. It
  is mixed with table salt and sugars to ease
  pouring. It is in just about everything
  dehydrated.
• Corn is also used in a wide range of non-food
  products as well such as textiles, adhesives, and
  (conversely) anything that should not stick is
  coated with corn.

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North American IndianOur Mother, Our Life
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In English corn means the staple grain of the
country. It might mean oats or wheat or rye or
maize, which is what we call corn. When
English-speaking peoples came to NA they called
maize Indian corn. (Indians in NA called it
mais but also referred to it as Our Mother,
Our Life, She Who Sustains Us. Indians lived
and died by corn, measured their lives by it. It
fed them, sheltered them, and they spent more
time at it than anything else. They worshipped
it.
Corn was widely distributed in NA at the time of
early contact and it is today. Corn is
responsible for the development of modern
technological North America. North Americans eat
only 10 of the corn grown in their countries but
that still amounts to 1.3 kg per day per person.
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Early Indian farming of corn (maize) was more
sophisticated than European farming. European
seeding was by broadcast (handfuls thrown in the
air) and weeding done after plants came up.
Indian farming was in neat rows, plants were
seeded in mounds, and variety of crops were
planted in the same mound usually beans, squash
and corn. And a small fish was buried in the
mound as well for nutrient value. The corn grew
straight, the bean climbed the corn and the
squash spread over the ground, keeping down the
weeds. Planting was a scared and performed after
a lot of thought and with special rites and
rituals. Beans, corn and squash are constants in
Indian cooking. They learned that together these
plants provided all of the nutrients needed but
corn alone would lead to dietary deficiency
diseases such as pellagra and kwashiorkor because
it does not provide the complete protein
requirements and lacks certain vitamins, notably
niacin. Indians in many parts of the Americas
added a pinch of wood ash to their food. The
lime in the ash softens the corn kernels and
makes it easier to digest and it releases bound
vitamins, enhancing the nutrient value of the
food. After 1492, corn spread with incredible
speed all over the world and became widely
adopted as a principal food staple.
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allery/corn.jpg
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HybridizationThe Green Revolution Begins
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The main varieties of corn are popcorn, sweet
corn (which we eat), dent corn (so-called because
of a dimple on each kernel), flint corn (the
favourite of early NA natives and many Africans),
and corn flour (many in South and Central
America). The most important of all crops is
dent grown world wide for animal feed and
industrial food products.
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Corn cannot seed itself (the husk encloses the
kernels, which are the seeds). Corn is highly
demanding needs large amounts of water and
nutrients In modern farming this requires large
amounts of irrigation and artificial fertilizers,
which in turn promote weeds that must be
controlled through weed-killers.
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Corn grows fast and is easily hybridized, or
cross-bred to produce improved varieties. Hybridiz
ation techniques were developed in the early
1900s and by the 1920 hybridized corn had
changed modern North American (mainly American)
farming. Most modern corn is based on a strain
that was accidentally created in the late 18800s
called Reids Yellow Dent. It had large yellow
kernels, evenly spaced in uniform rows on the
cob. With in a few years it spread all across
the US. The unfortunate consequence of this was
the disappearance of literally thousands of corn
varieties that had been protected by the Indians
and the early American settlers.
The Indians, on the other hand, insisted on
variety in corn and valued different types. They
did this by making sure different types of corn
did not mix.
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Creating hybridized corn seeds was and still is
done in some places by hand. The corn plant is
both male and female and to create a hybrid
strain the tassels of one plant have to be remove
so it can be fertilized by another and not by
itself. If the corn is in a field, all the
plants have to be tasselled
Modern corn breeding is through genetic
modification and by the technique of producing
male sterile plants.
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Modern corn has been bred for its standability
(stalks stiff enough to support the ears) so it
can be mechanically harvested. Other
characteristics include yield, early maturity,
disease and pest resistance, uniformity and
quality of grain. 500 million tonnes of corn are
grown each year, about 50 in the US corn belt
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Modern Corn ProductionHuge Yields, Huge Problems
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Large scale corn production is highly mechanized,
thus consuming fossil fuels. Maize consumes much
of the soils nitrogen and this has to be
replaced. Nitrogen in the air is not in a form
available to plants and so anhydrous nitrogen
created when atmospheric nitrogen is flared with
methane is injected into the soil by
farmers. Phosphorous and potassium and other
nutrients are also added are large amounts of
herbicides because the weeds are also
artificially nourished by the fertilizers.
Pesticides are also applied. But weeds and pests
are becoming resistant to current chemicals and
so increasing amounts are being used and a lot of
money is spent on developing new chemicals. Corn
also requires huge amounts of water. In some
places it is irrigated water, which is expensive
and consumes energy. The water either
irrigation or rain washes chemicals from the
water and into the ground water, contaminating
wells. Harvesting is done by machine (kernels are
taken from the cobs in the field) and then air
dried with hot air.
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Modern agriculture is largely mechanized. Farm
labour needs have been reduced to a fraction of
what they were 100 years ago. (90 were rural
farm dependent now 97 are urban dwellers.) The
small town has largely disappeared in North
America. Modern agriculture is expensive, with
long hours and high risks and low profit. Few
want to go into it, and so agribusiness
corporations are increasingly buying up the
farms. Profits are small because yields are so
large that markets are flooded and prices are
low. Huge amounts of corn are fed to livestock to
fatten it before market. This is done in large
feedlot operations, called intensive livestock
operations, where thousands of animals are
automatically fed corn. Manure is removed but in
some cases pollution of ground water is
inevitable, cf. Walkerton, ON., as well as
surrounding streams and rivers. Finally, larges
numbers of traditional corn varieties are being
eliminated through the monoculture of modern
farming. This makes modern corn hydroids
especially susceptible to disease and blights.