News and Politics

The Food Pyramid of Corn/Oil

by Kevin O'Toole, Onondaga Community College, May 29, 2008

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One of the most prominent issues that is affecting everyone today is the cost of a
gallon of gas, which of course is based on the current price of a barrel of oil. Since we are currently achieving record highs for the price of a barrel of oil, this expense is having an adverse effect on our lifestyles, and whether or not we have any disposable income to work with after the bills are paid. Of course, the price of the barrel of oil just doesn’t just affect how much it costs to fill the tanks of our various modes of transportation. Our entire economy is fossil fuel dependent. The extent of this dependency I personally was unaware of until this semester of college. This affects not only how much it costs to feed our cars, it extends to the price we pay to feed ourselves, in more ways than one.

A few of the sources for this enlightenment were Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s
Dilemma, the treatise that documented Pollan’s search to discover the origins of his food, and ultimately his desire to become intimate with his meal by becoming an active participant in the food chain, not just a consumer at the end of the line. There is also the companion documentary to The Omnivore’s Dilemma, named appropriately, King Corn.

King Corn is the tale of two college buddies, Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis, who after having their hair follicles tested, find out they are full of corn. This intrigues the duo, who then set out on a journey, leaving their homes in Boston to find out where all this corn is coming from. They arrive in Iowa, where they set up shop, to grow an acre of subsidized, industrial corn. And finally, there is the End of Suburbia, a documentary from 2004, which predicts (and up to this point, quite accurately I might add) the drying up of what was once thought of as infinite resource, oil and natural gas as well.

To understand how we got here, to the point where we are so dependent on fossil
fuel and how it affects our food chain, we have to go back. Back to the beginning of
suburbia, back to the time when the government insured a farmer’s crop, instead of subsidizing it, which set prices on grain crops so low that farmers had no choice but to over-produce, tilling up pasture land for grain crops.

The beginning of suburbia was after World War II, a time of great prosperity in
America, when returning veterans in search of the American dream, left the cities they
grew up in, which after one hundred years of industrialization were far from homey, for
the greener pastures (which many once were) of the new suburbs with their cookie-cutter homes. The problem was that most of these suburbanites still worked in the city, which led to a mass of commuters on overly congested roads trying to get into the city. An example of this problem is what happened in downtown Syracuse, NY. An entire close knit, prominently African-American neighborhood was demolished to make way for the construction of Interstate 81 which would allow commuters to whisk into the city.

Many of the displaced residents ended up in public housing, since they did not have the
financial means to make the exodus to the suburbs. Gas was extremely cheap during
this time and the average family allocated more for their grocery bill.

It was also during this post-war era that more petroleum based pesticides and
fertilizers were being used to help farmers increase their yields. The price paid for
this higher productivity was chemical run-off which polluted streams and other bodies
of water. The era of the self-sufficient farm, of raising your own livestock and growing
your own crops for your own consumption was coming to a close. You either jumped on
the industrial bandwagon, or you went broke. Period. It was also during this period, in
the 1950’s as recounted in the End of Suburbia that a geologist by the name of Dr. M.
King Hubbard predicted that the production of oil would peak in 1970, and that we better start taking a hard look at alternatives, for once production goes into decline, the demand will outweigh the supply. Unfortunately for us, since gas was under twenty-five cents a gallon at the time, he wasn’t taken seriously.

Also back in the early 1970’s, grain prices skyrocketed, which was a boon for the
farmer, who received record returns for his crop. The higher price paid to the farmer was
passed on to the consumer the following year, with exorbitant grocery prices. The
constituents pleaded for lower food bills, and the government caved in 1973 with a farm bill, led by President Nixon’s secretary of agriculture, Earl Butz.

No one would ever buy a head of lettuce that was saturated and dripping with oil
(the petroleum variety, not the salad type),yet that is exactly what you are doing when
you live on the east coast and buy a head of lettuce produced in California. The tractor
that tills and plants and eventually harvests the field, the fertilizer and pesticide to help
the lettuce grow, the refrigerated tractor trailer that ships the produce and the asphalt
which it rides upon are all petroleum based or dependent. Even the plastic wrap that
you take off the head of lettuce and toss in the garbage is petroleum based.

Which brings us back to the pyramid of industrial corn, another food source
which is petroleum dependent. To most people, the term “corn-fed” has wholesome
ramifications, yet I would venture to guess that most people don’t know that cows do
not possess the intestinal fortitude to stomach corn. Yet, this is what they are being
fed to speed up the fattening process with ample doses of antibiotics to overcome this
evolutionary deformity. The beef that comes to us from these cows is extremely un-
healthy, laden with fat from the sedentary lifestyle these cows lead. This surplus
industrial corn is also being fed to us in more ways than we are aware of. The production of high fructose corn syrup is being used as a sweetener in mass quantities in everything from bread to baked goods to soft drinks. High fructose corn syrup is a much cheaper alternative to sugar cane. As a result of this unhealthy meat and hidden sweeteners,obesity, heart disease, and diabetes are at an all-time high. The presence of morbidly obese people in our society is a much more common occurrence than it used to be. Some of these people are so overweight, that electric scooters are needed for their mobility, since their legs can no longer support their weight.

So, the question is where do we go from here. The price of a gallon of gas isn’t
going to come down dramatically anytime soon. Food prices are on a steady rise due to
transportation costs and the expense of having health insurance will continue to rise due to so many people requiring health care on a regular basis. No longer will it be feasible to live in the suburbs, commute to work in a SUV, and eat food that has been shipped thousands of miles. We need to find alternatives and we need them now.

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