Smart Energy

Corn is inspiring a spitting contest and the goober fest is probably going to end up in a mutant hybrid of agriculture that, twenty years from now, none of us will recognize.

An example of the yellow journalism inspired by corn is emerging over at Corn Commentary, a blog put up by the National Corn Growers Association. I’ve been studying it for a couple days, and it’s pretty typical of what agribusiness is shelling out in the way of positive spin for the industry. Truly, it doesn’t bode well, at least not if the economy of the food system comes down to a war of words. Alas, tain’t so simple.

In particular, I was taken by a post that attempts to deliver a roundhouse kick to the new film, Food, Inc. Like a slew of films in the past couple years, Food, Inc. is anti-agribiz. Corn Commentary takes a reviewer of the film to task with repostes like this:

Let’s just start with the most obvious. According to the [Illinois Times], “Only the tiniest fraction (less than a bushel per person) of the 1 billion bushels of corn grown annually comes to consumers as corn — on the cob or as chips, tortillas, cornmeal, etc.” Actually, our corn production in this country last year was 12 billion bushels. And that’s only corn for grain, some of which may be counted as food grade for chips, tortillas, corn meal, etc. Sweet corn production is not measured in bushels, although this article attempts to clump it together with field corn as if it were the same thing.

Whatever the total yield of corn is (and yeah, let’s lump it all together until the bloggers at the National Corn Growers Association can explain to us mere mortals why we shouldn’t – whose your audience, baby?), it is in fact true that only a tiny percentage goes to the fresh market. Check out the film King Corn for the lowdown on high fructose corn syrup, among other products that suck up megabushels. But the main use of corn is as feed grain, at least according to USDA’s Economic Research Service. As more and more is diverted to ethanol production, though, you can count on higher food prices – not because fresh corn is being diverted, but as the foundation of the food system becomes even more tightly commodified.

The wack thing about Corn Commentary’s spit ball is that it’s called “Abundant Food Is Good,” an idea neither Food, Inc. nor it’s reviewer at the Illinois Times contests. So many agribiz blogs and PR firms are one-trick ponies: they erect a straw man (or a corn dolly), and then knock it down – but they don’t get the facts straight and can’t write a cogent argument.

Not that it really matters. Agribiz controls the world food supply, so they don’t even really need to bother mustering any sort of argument. Or do they? Recent attempts to legislate the food system, clumsy and contradictory as they are, must be sending chills down the spines of agribiz accountants. That the National Corn Growers Association resorts to a lame-ass blog, on top of its big-budget lobbying effort, is proof that there’s a groundswell of resistance to monocropped agribiz food-like substances.

Either that, or a lot of young ag communications majors are pretty good at conning their way into jobs by evangelizing for new media.