Corn Farmers on the Grill

by Kerry Trueman You'd think that Iowa's corn farmers would be doing cartwheels in their fields after harvesting a bumper crop this season and getting top dollar for it, thanks to the ethanol boom. But as the Washington Post reports today, corn farmers have reaped an earful of bad pr along with those 420 billion or so ears of corn. The phrase "corn-fed" sounds like a dis, now, thanks to corn's starring role as the villain in Michael Pollan's best selling The Omnivore's Dilemma, and the documentary King Corn, both of which lay the blame for our corroded food chain on all those amber waves of grain. The ethanol bandwagon's hit a pothole, too, now that the downside of ratcheting up corn production for fuel is getting more press. As Jerry Schnoor, a University of Iowa professor of civil and environmental engineering, told the Washington Post, "The environmental constraints are just too great. It's too much nutrients, too much soil loss, too much pesticides. We don't have the land." Corn fields already cover 14 million acres in Iowa, more than a third of the state's surface. As the Washington Post notes, "Tens of thousands of acres in Iowa once set aside for conservation were plowed this year for corn. The Iowa landscape is a patchwork of corn and soybean monocultures, with about as much biodiversity as a bachelor's refrigerator." Yes, and with just about as much nutrition. But as long as Americans remain addicted to soda, fast food and the promise of "cheap" fuel, corn will continue to rule. Crunch all you want. They'll plant more.