Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Corn and Capitalism
It was discussed in the reading and in class today how the crop that we have kept alive for so many years (corn) is not just a form of agriculture that we like to eat. The author explains the evolution of corn and why it is so important to society. I seemed to observe some very interesting links among the topics discussed in the reading and how this simple crop is very much a catalyst for profit making and is the key ingredient to capiltalism. Just look around the super market. The supermarket is full of inventory that is solely there because somebody is trying to make a profit off of it. Almost everything you see in the store can be linked to corn somehow. many of the food contains corn syrup or corn flour. Many of the foods in the store are made up of animals that once ate corn. Take a walk over to the deli section. There is a plethora of meats, all different kind of animals. Most of these animals grew up on similar farms and were served similar corn feed everyday. The author talks about the relationship between the steer and corn. As I just said the steer eats corn. And as most of us know the steer's main purpose is to one day be a beutiful slice of medium rare steak presented to us at a nice five star restaurant. So the steer eats the corn and is then sent away to the slaughter house. The meat and poultry industry is a huge profit making industry and once again we trace it back to corn. One fifth of our petroleum consumption in the US is used just to ship our food. This same adventure that we followed corn on through the meat market can be done with many other products in the supermarket as well, proving that corn is quite a smart species to create this partnership with humans and become such an importance piece to so many capitalists profit making strategies.
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I agree with Ryan Hamilton's opinion on how corn has kept us alive for so many years without us aware of that. Pollan has revealed to us that most foods that we eat contain corn. I can conclude that our life is all about consuming corn. Corn itself is a food, if we see through its appearance, but it also produces many other foods. For instance, the meat that we ate; chickens and cows, they eat corn too! I never knew about this before reading Pollan's. Even the drinks that we consume everyday most likely to have corn in the form of corn flour, corn syrup etc.
In order to grow corn in huge amounts and faster rate, the use of petro-chemicals and fertilizers have become very important especially in the world of capitalism these days. The capitalists see that corn is making such a big profit, hence, they don’t consider that the use of fertilizers can give such detrimental to human's health, animals, and our environment. Albeit, corn is a healthy thing to eat, but it is not safe anymore as it has been contaminated by the many bad chemicals from the fertilizers. It is no doubt that corn is everywhere nowadays, and it is not wrong if the capitalists want to make profit from it, but I think it is a good approach if they change the use of synthetic fertilizers to natural fertilizers. This is because the latter do not bring much negative effects to the environment. They should concern about the consumer as well instead of making profit for their whole life!
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