http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/15/technology/15online.html
Capitalism on the Cob
By DAN MITCHELL
Published: April 15, 2006
MICHAEL POLLAN'S new book, "The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural
History of Four Meals," describes a nation that is the victim of "a
plague of corn." The No. 1 legal crop is "the perfect capitalist
plant," he said on "Fresh Air" on NPR this week.
About a third of Mr. Pollan's book is taken up with corn. It is
the "keystone species" of the "industrial food chain" that feeds
most of us, he said in an interview with Techdirt.com.
America, Mr. Pollan says, has "a national eating disorder." To
describe it, the book traces the creation of four meals:
one "industrial," two "organic," and one procured by the author
himself as a "hunter-gatherer."
There are problems with each, but the industrial meal, not
surprisingly, is the most troublesome. He traces it from an Iowa
cornfield to its final form fast food scarfed down in a moving car.
All along that journey, corn wreaks havoc. The overuse of nitrogen
fertilizers leads to occasional "blue baby" alerts in Des Moines
warning parents that nitrate-loaded tap water could render their
babies' brains unable to receive oxygen. Those same fertilizers flow
down the Mississippi into the Gulf of Mexico, where they seasonally
create a "dead zone" the size of New Jersey that is dangerous to sea
life.
By virtue of its being "paved over" with corn, Iowa is, in its way,
the most developed state in the country, he told NPR. On the market,
corn is cheap, Mr. Pollan points out. But the costs to the
environment, to the economy, and to the health care system are
enormous.
"We eat so much corn that, biologically speaking, most Americans are
corn on two legs," Bonnie Azab Powell, a journalist, wrote on
NewsCenter site of the University of California, Berkeley
(berkeley.edu/news).
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