Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Don't Put All Your Eggs In One Basket: Corn
As is made evident in the excerpt from The Omnivore’s Dilemma, by Michael Pollan, the United States is very much dependant on corn to keep our economy going. Corn feeds our families both by being consumed in its natural form or by being converted into almost every food imaginable. Corn feeds our livestock so that we can get fat, juicy burgers in half the time it would take if one let nature take its course. Corn can easily be converted into high fructose corn syrup, a staple ingredient in practically anything that tastes sweet. Corn also provides this country with jobs. Corn needs people to farm it, cultivate it, process it, transport it, sell it, advertise it, lobby for it, etc. Corn doesn’t just give, however: the production of this much corn does not come without cost. Corn and its cultivation require the use of fossil fuels in order to keep the soil rich in nitrogen. Corn demands the use of fossil fuels to transport it and to convert into various corn-related synthetics. Corn makes a real mess, too: it significantly alters the environment and can seriously alter the food chain. We put a lot into Corn, and Corn gives back. It’s a great system. As much as 25% of the items one find in a supermarket can be traced back to corn. However, that leads to a dangerous question: what if some kind of superbug evolved that specialized in eating up our corn? What if there were to be a repeat of the infamous Irish Potato Famine, but this time with corn? How would we survive? Would be survive? Is our country sophisticated enough to prevent the creation of such potentially deadly diseases? Is our country sophisticated enough to prevent the spread of such a disease if one were to come into being?
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2 comments:
Pollan, in his writing mentioned about the surplus chemical of ammonium nitrate after the World War II. I wonder whether it is a smart move to make fertilizers out of the chemical. Of course, it is a great source of nitrogen, which is essential to all living creatures, including corn. One might say that people at that time were just utilizing the war's leftover, in fact where else could they dump the unused chemicals? But, now we have seen the harm that these chemical fertilizers had caused to our soil, water resources, and animals when they are used on plants, particularly corn. Like Eric said, in this entry "[w]hat if there were to be a repeat of the infamous Irish Potato Famine, but this time with corn?". In the end, the things discussed about corn lead to one conclusion: capitalism. Our 'driven-to-solely-profit-making' world is the main reason why these chemical fertilizers are still being used on corn, and why our steers are still being fed with corn (as Pollan later, discussed in his writing). It seems almost impossible to reverse these acts, and let everything being handled by nature alone. This is what Karl Marx described in one of his book, in Frankenstein analogy of how it is out of control from the creators (human beings) and how destructive it is.
I am not sure if this is accurate as we may think. Although there are plenty of studies done about ammonium nitrate and the negative causes that it may have, who is it to say that this is unethical. There are several of large corporations in this world that thrive on selling products that are not socially responsible. Starbucks for example, started as a local coffee store on your local street corner, but then turned into a monopoly coffee supplier. This in fact ruined thousands of small owned coffee shops in rural areas. Starbucks is considered to have around 100 percent of total market share within the coffee industry. This is absolutely absurd. What if we were to do away with fertilizers such as ammonium nitrate? Would the corn industry as well as the several other industries of today that rely on the production of corn be able to sustain profits? Would hundreds of people lose their jobs? I am not one to say, but these are all ethical questions that must be considered when taking into account the ethical question of ammonium nitrate. Who has the right to determine which ethical issue outweighs another?
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