Eat your corn!

I never heard that admonition from my mother because I was always the first to eat those hot, buttered roasting ears. But, someone, somewhere, may have to hear it. Yesterday the U.S.D.A. estimated this fall's corn harvest at 10.6 billion bushels. That's more than 35 bushels for every person in the United States!

Of course, not all that corn will be consumed in America - and not all by humans. Corn is an important livestock feed.

This all makes me think of a meeting I attended in Kansas about forty years ago. The meeting was to address the growing concern that America would not be able to continue to feed its growing population. One of the speakers responded to the question of our running out of land to raise crops. I remember his mentioning that we were not yet having to plant the median of Interstate Highway 70, which meanders over 400 miles across The Sunflower State.

My hat is off to the farmers of America and their partners in the business of supplying chemicals to help grow bigger, insect free crops, and medicines which make livestock healthier.

And, without the modern machines of agriculture we would not be able to plant or harvest today's bumper crops. If we still snapped corn by hand, the way I did as a kid, we would not need to plant any corn next year. It would take us two or three years to pick those 10.6 billion bushels.

Today there is a big movement toward organic foods. Remembering the scrubby little ears of corn we picked in the 1930s, I find it hard to understand this movement. If we ever quit the use of pesticides and fertilizers, or quit feeding supplements to our livestock, we may well reach the point where we cannot feed our own. Much less a big chunk of the world's hungry.