I just finished watching King Corn , and I’m surprised at how efficient growing corn is, at least on its face. According to the documentary, a 40-bushel crop was really something back in the early 1900s. The documentarians were able to raise about 150 bushels on one acre of land, by comparison. They had the benefit of growing a highly productive crop (feed corn) using anhydrous ammonia and a mechanized process.
Due to the efficiency of farming feed corn, the uses have expanded to fit the supply. Corn is now the source of nearly everything that we eat. Two factors combine to create this crisis: direct corn derivatives in food and feedlot production, where corn is used as a bulking agent in the feeding of livestock.
HFCS is more efficient than sugar
Since corn is so cheap and abundant, high-fructose corn syrup will almost always cost less than sugar. While the processing of sugar is relatively simple, the process to make HFCS is somewhat more complicated. Even though more energy is used to make it, the earlier efficiency in the system of growing the corn negates the refining costs.
So we have this overabundance of HFCS, and it creeps into everything we eat. It’s cheap, but is it the dark side of Western efficiency?
Inefficient systems cost more
Feed lot beef may be efficient as a business, but this efficiency comes at a great cost. Feed lot cows live their youth being grass-fed. Once they weigh around 700 pounds, they are shipped off to the lot to bulk up. To do this, are confined and fed mostly corn products. In these few months they gain 500 pounds, both due to caloric density and their lack of exercise.
They certainly cannot survive on these diets, and quickly begin to form stomach ulcers. Their close proximity to each other means that illness spreads quickly, and antibiotics are needed to mitigate the threat. The documentary cited 70% of all antibiotics produced are used on livestock.
These are only the side-effects of the shift to corn feed. There are many other ways farming cattle has been modernized that cause other issues, all out of scope.
The terrible cost of efficiency
We as a people spend half as much as we once did on food, and it is available (and wasted) in great abundance. We are able to eat more than previous generations. We think nothing of drinking our calories. We’re drinking ourselves into insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes and obesity. Part of the findings of a study of 3500 people from the 1970s through the 1990s bears this out:
In the group studied during the 1970s, type 2 diabetes was diagnosed in 2% of the women and 2.7% of the men. In the 1980s group, those figures rose to 3% for women and 3.6% for men. During the 1990s, the numbers were their highest in 30 years: 3.7% for women and 5.8% for men in that group.
The 1970s coincides with the change to the farming subsidies that changed from paying farmers to not plant, to paying them whether they plant or not, removing the economic disincentive for growing “bumper” crops. Abundance led to excess product, which led to the efficient, but possibly dangerous situation we find ourselves in.
What can we do about it?
So what, if anything, can we do about it? For “product” foods, read the label and don’t buy anything that mentions corn on the label. When it comes to beef, either don’t eat it, or seek out naturally grazed beef. I know Whole Foods has a decent selection in their case. Dairy is also either avoidable or you can make the selection for the naturally grazed stuff. The brown eggs in the grocery store are often from chickens who graze for their food, just read the label.
The benefits of the more “natural” animal products mainly pertain to higher levels of Omega-3 content and some say a lack of antibiotics. The former can be quantified, but the latter varies by whether the product is also certified organic. Don’t assume naturally fed means anything.
Also, this isn’t a political issue. Some decisions were made by people who may not have had your best interests at heart, but it doesn’t make them evil. While I find the whole system very efficient in many ways, I’m not going out of my way to say everything efficient is good. Efficiency is not political. When it is, it can be scary, and I don’t want to associate efficienting with advocacy of or backing of any one political ideal.
King Corn
..or “perhaps agriculture is too efficient”
I just finished watching King Corn
, and I’m surprised at how efficient growing corn is, at least on its face. According to the documentary, a 40-bushel crop was really something back in the early 1900s. The documentarians were able to raise about 150 bushels on one acre of land, by comparison. They had the benefit of growing a highly productive crop (feed corn) using anhydrous ammonia and a mechanized process.
Due to the efficiency of farming feed corn, the uses have expanded to fit the supply. Corn is now the source of nearly everything that we eat. Two factors combine to create this crisis: direct corn derivatives in food and feedlot production, where corn is used as a bulking agent in the feeding of livestock.
HFCS is more efficient than sugar
Since corn is so cheap and abundant, high-fructose corn syrup will almost always cost less than sugar. While the processing of sugar is relatively simple, the process to make HFCS is somewhat more complicated. Even though more energy is used to make it, the earlier efficiency in the system of growing the corn negates the refining costs.
So we have this overabundance of HFCS, and it creeps into everything we eat. It’s cheap, but is it the dark side of Western efficiency?
Inefficient systems cost more
Feed lot beef may be efficient as a business, but this efficiency comes at a great cost. Feed lot cows live their youth being grass-fed. Once they weigh around 700 pounds, they are shipped off to the lot to bulk up. To do this, are confined and fed mostly corn products. In these few months they gain 500 pounds, both due to caloric density and their lack of exercise.
They certainly cannot survive on these diets, and quickly begin to form stomach ulcers. Their close proximity to each other means that illness spreads quickly, and antibiotics are needed to mitigate the threat. The documentary cited 70% of all antibiotics produced are used on livestock.
These are only the side-effects of the shift to corn feed. There are many other ways farming cattle has been modernized that cause other issues, all out of scope.
The terrible cost of efficiency
We as a people spend half as much as we once did on food, and it is available (and wasted) in great abundance. We are able to eat more than previous generations. We think nothing of drinking our calories. We’re drinking ourselves into insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes and obesity. Part of the findings of a study of 3500 people from the 1970s through the 1990s bears this out:
The 1970s coincides with the change to the farming subsidies that changed from paying farmers to not plant, to paying them whether they plant or not, removing the economic disincentive for growing “bumper” crops. Abundance led to excess product, which led to the efficient, but possibly dangerous situation we find ourselves in.
What can we do about it?
So what, if anything, can we do about it? For “product” foods, read the label and don’t buy anything that mentions corn on the label. When it comes to beef, either don’t eat it, or seek out naturally grazed beef. I know Whole Foods has a decent selection in their case. Dairy is also either avoidable or you can make the selection for the naturally grazed stuff. The brown eggs in the grocery store are often from chickens who graze for their food, just read the label.
The benefits of the more “natural” animal products mainly pertain to higher levels of Omega-3 content and some say a lack of antibiotics. The former can be quantified, but the latter varies by whether the product is also certified organic. Don’t assume naturally fed means anything.
Also, this isn’t a political issue. Some decisions were made by people who may not have had your best interests at heart, but it doesn’t make them evil. While I find the whole system very efficient in many ways, I’m not going out of my way to say everything efficient is good. Efficiency is not political. When it is, it can be scary, and I don’t want to associate efficienting with advocacy of or backing of any one political ideal.
Related Posts: