King Corn

One debate gaining prominence in the United States today concerns the use of a particular sweetener in our foods. High fructose corn syrup is an artificially produced sweetener from the extractions of corn, a replacement for imported and natural cane sugar. The reasons for this debate are that the effects of HFCS on the body are unclear; the product is suspected to be linked to America’s alarming obesity rate due to the body’s purported inability to process it. Whatever the truth may be, the use of HFCS illustrates a wider phenomenon in the United States: our culinary dependence on corn.

More widely produced in America than anywhere in the world, in 2007 the United States harvested 332,092,180 tons of corn versus the entire European Union’s 62,852,922 tons. A look to the ingredients label on most any packaged food product sold in the US will often show an ingredient comprised of, or somehow tied to, corn. For instance, something as basic as red meat has its ties to corn. In the United States, most cattle are fed an unnatural diet solely of corn; a diet which adversely affects the cow’s health and requires the use of antibiotics which then enter our own bodies when eaten. One may not initially realize that something like meat would be so reliant on corn, but the extent of corn usage in the US is truly surprising. Food Inc., a movie investigating the food industry in the United States, revealed that corn is an ingredient in or linked to foods such as ketchup, cheese, twinkies, batteries, peanut butter, Cheez-Its, salad dressing, Coke, jelly, syrup, artificial sweeteners, juice; the list goes on. In America, corn is king.

An official trailer for the movie “Food Inc.”, which reveals America’s extreme reliance on corn

Aside from the possible health effects of a mostly corn-based diet, there could be a much greater risk to relying on one sole crop for food production. Ireland’s history shows that such a risk is quite real, and that the after effects would be devastating. As an analysis of such a risk, and as a warning against America’s culinary habits, this entry of MediumHistorica will examine the Potato Famine which occurred in Ireland in the mid-nineteenth century; a famine that ravaged an entire people and drastically changed the demographics of not one, but several nations.

An Gorta Mór

In 1845 a plant disease called Phytophthora Infestans, or the Late Potato Blight, swept into Ireland and began rotting the potato crops. For any other industrialized nation of the period–the United States, Great Britain, or even France–this would’ve only slightly altered the diet of the populace. Ireland, however, was a much different case. Under British administration since 1801, a variety of factors made the native population of Ireland both poor and heavily reliant on the potato.

The path to poverty and single crop reliance in Ireland was gradual but essentially forced. When Oliver Cromwell took power in Britain 200 years prior, he had conducted a series of brutal campaigns against the Irish; the British soldiery wantonly butchered Catholic civilians in order to bring the neighboring island under Cromwell’s control. These campaigns removed swathes of the native population, and allowed for more affluent, protestant immigrants to come from Britain. A divide began in Ireland that saw bitter and destitute Catholics living among prosperous Anglicans who held the Irish in contempt.

Struggles and violence continued throughout the course of the next century, and eventually the Catholic lower classes found themselves in dire straights. Catholics were barred by law from owning land, had no voting rights, and were unable to hold public office. Protestant land owners, who possessed vast tracts of land and palatial estates, were often vacant from their property and it was the responsibility of the Irish peasantry for the estates’ wellbeing.

Essentially a ressurrection of feudalism, the Irish lower classes were not only required to keep the properties in good condition, but also to tend to the livestock, as well as the planting and harvesting of crops. “Payment”, for the Irish, was a small parcel of land that was theirs while they continued to work for the landowner. The Irish were the peasantry of industrial Europe; working for the right to be tenants on a tiny section of land. By the nineteenth century when Great Britain officially took control of Ireland with the Act of Union, there was a very distinct apartheid present.

The potato was initially a blessing. A hardy, filling crop that grew well in small areas, it was the primary source for nutrition in the Irish diet. Unfortunately, the conveniences that made the Irish rely on the potato contributed to their hardship. The Irish had no other abundant source of nutrition.

The effects of the blight were devastating. In 1845, half of the nation’s potato crop was wiped out. Even worse, the blight affected the germination of the potatoes and so in 1846, with up to 75% of the potato crop devastated, few replacement seeds were able to be planted. The starvation worsened; a quarter of the entire Irish population either perished or had fled abroad to other nations for a better life, such as the United States and Great Britain. Thus began the Irish diaspora: a radical change of demographic back home in Ireland and abroad.

A diagram showing the sharp decline in Irish population during the Great Famine.

Tenants to Genetics

Both corn and the potato are quite similar in some ways; they are cheap to produce, are dense alternatives to grains, and are calorie rich. Both are versatile in that they are a malleable food and can be made in a variety of ways; milled down and made into bread or simply cooked, buttered and eaten as they are. Unfortunately, they also share a striking similarity in that, in both the past and present, people rely on them almost exclusively for nutrition. A destruction of the corn crop in the US today could bring about similar misery as the potato failure did in 1840s Ireland.

The idea is not that much of a stretch. We have a lot of technological advances today in the United States, and one of those advances  in the field of science is the genetic modification of food. The effects of genetic modification are still being debated: new tests emerge every so often supporting or decrying the practice. But tampering with the natural production of corn leaves a future that is uncertain. It has been proven that genetically modifying corn affects the crop’s germination, as well as the germination of non-altered corn crops nearby. What if, in our quest to produce a corn crop impervious to pesticides and disease, we ultimately destroy the sole crop our nation’s food products rely so heavily on? With over 40,000 products at a local supermarket that have a association with corn, how would we cope with a corn crop failure?

I am no scientist. The answers to these questions cannot be answered in a blog. But what can be better analyzed is the way our leaders and businesses handle our nation’s diet. Before we invest so much faith into a cheaply grown crop, and furthermore tamper with its very makeup, perhaps we should look at Ireland’s dismal past and learn from their mistakes. Perhaps we should pay more attention to the food sold in our supermarkets and begin to introduce more variety into our diets; not just market the same basic ingredient in different ways. Otherwise, American History could very well have its very own chapter called The Great Hunger.